


Recorded Recollections: the Motion Practice Universe Turns One

by the_wordbutler



Series: Motion Practice [14]
Category: Cable and Deadpool, Marvel (Comics), Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Legal Drama, Multi, motion practice universe, mpu: one year anniversary, short prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-21
Updated: 2013-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-15 17:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 52
Words: 48,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/852249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_wordbutler/pseuds/the_wordbutler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Many prompts, many relationships, one year, one universe.  Happy birthday to the MPU.</p><p>bubbleslayer requested: <i>Loki has to visit the DA's office for some reason. He gets stuck in the elevator with a member of the DA's office. I'm thinking Coulson, but I'll leave that up to you. The story isn't about the two in the elevator though, it's about the reactions of everyone else in the office when they realize someone's stuck in the elevator with Loki.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Twenty-Five Minutes

**Author's Note:**

> In honor of the MPU's first anniversary, I am taking short prompts from readers and writing miniature stories for them. All of these will be posted as chapters in this document, and will be updated through approximately June 28, 2013.
> 
> In order to keep Jen and saranoh from going insane--and to let them have some surprises!--all mistakes are my own.

“Ten bucks says he kills him.”

Pepper sighs. “Tony . . . ”

“Fifteen,” Maria says without looking up from her cell phone.

Clint wonders what it looks like from the outside, the entire district attorney’s office standing in the hallway outside the elevator bay, milling around like they’re waiting for the doors to open at a concert hall. Seriously, they’re _all_ there—Maria with her Blackberry, Natasha skimming a case file, Steve looking nervous while Bucky smirks, you name it—and they’re all waiting. The elevator repair guys’d pried the doors open ten minutes earlier, which means all the mechanisms on top the elevator car are on pretty glorious display.

The car itself is caught between the fifth and sixth floors. Stuck due to some kinda impossible malfunction that gummed up the whole works.

“Coulson is a reasonable man,” Thor says. His arms are crossed over his enormous chest, but his face makes pretty clear how little he believes the _reasonable man_ thing. “I am sure he and my brother—”

“The guy who kicked his ass six ways from Sunday at that motion hearing last week?” Darcy asks. She’s trying to sneakily press file label stickers to Jane’s enormous belly. Jane smacks her hand again. “Because, I mean, I think Coulson wanted to fricassee the guy.”

“And don’t forget the appeal,” Tony chimes in. He’s got an arm thrown around Bruce, who’s busily typing something into his phone and ignoring the extra attention. “Because that appeal is crazy to _me_ , and when I say an appeal is crazy—”

“Then it’s probably certifiable,” Bruce finishes. His lips tip up into a little smile while Tony looks momentarily betrayed.

“And there were two new motions filed in that robbery case,” Peggy notes.

“And—”

“He is a reasonable man,” Thor repeats, cutting Maria off. His jaw is tight with worry. “He and my brother will find common ground.”

There’s a suspiciously long beat of silence before Natasha decides, “Twenty bucks on Phil.”

“Thirty,” Maria challenges, and Natasha tips her head in grudging respect.

“Forty,” Bucky chimes in. Clint thinks for a minute he’s serious, too, but then Steve sends him one of his scolding looks and Bucky shrugs a little. It turns into a staring contest and elbowing-match, the two of them knocking together like kids on the playground, and Clint honestly wonders whether that’s what marriage is like.

Seems, well, weird.

Then again, neither of them have a boyfriend who’s spent the last twenty-five minutes trapped in an elevator with Loki Laufeyson. What’s worse, Clint’s got both his phone _and_ Phil’s, meaning that Phil’s pretty much without any distractions.

Phil, who spent seriously half an hour the night before ranting about the futility of Loki’s motions. Phil, who’d really only calmed down after Clint’d grabbed him by the hips, wrestled him onto the couch, and—

Okay, point is, he’s half expecting the blood bath.

“You’re being quiet,” Tony says suddenly, and Clint looks up from where he’s staring at the elevator mechanisms to see the guy’s full, intense attention tuned in on him. He swallows, and Tony’s mouth kicks up in a grin. “Actually, you’re being uncharacteristically quiet. You wanna put money down on Laufeyson instead of your boy? Because, I mean, we can go either way on the betting pool, if you’re interested.”

“He’s probably worried,” Bruce puts in. He slides his cell phone into his pocket and sends Clint a sympathetic smile. Clint tries to smile back, but twenty-five minutes is a long damn time. “I’d probably be worried.”

Tony scowls at him. “Only probably?”

“You’re pretty good at entertaining yourself,” Pepper notes. When Tony grins and opens his mouth to offer something that’s probably filthy as fuck, she rolls her eyes and Bruce—sympathetic, decent Bruce who’s great except for his weird taste in men—puts his fingers over Tony’s lips.

What happens next is disgusting and Clint refuses to discuss it.

Besides, the other thing that happens next is this weird buzz-and-whir sound before the elevator finally, slowly, starts to rise. It’s surreal to see it come up with the doors still standing open, inch by painful inch until both Phil and Laufeyson appear in their full glory. They’re standing in opposite corners of the car, Laufeyson with his jacket off and over his arm, Phil with his tie loosened and his sleeves rolled up, and Clint—

He’s not proud of it, but Clint is momentarily tempted to wrap arms around his guy and not let go.

Instead, he stands there, hands in his pockets, while Laufeyson strides out of the elevator with his nose in the air. “I believe we have a meeting,” he informs Maria curtly.

“Good to see you are unharmed by your experiences, brother,” Thor says. He clasps Laufeyson on the shoulder and is immediately rewarded with a nasty scowl. “I was afraid for you.”

“It was an elevator, not a fight with a bear,” Laufeyson returns, and then shifts away from Thor’s big hand. “Miss Hill?”

“Sure,” Maria replies, and at least waits until he’s stepped past her to roll her eyes.

The group sorta starts breaking up after that, muttering about who owes whom what kinda cash, when Clint feels Phil at his elbow. Not physically feels, but senses him, his closeness and familiarity. When he glances over his shoulder, Phil smiles, and it encourages Clint enough to bump their arms together.

They’re not like Tony and Bruce, you know? They’re a little more private, a little more subtle when it comes to touch.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” Phil echoes. His fingers slide along Clint’s back for a minute, and Clint tries not to shiver. “Worry about me?”

Clint shrugs. “More about Laufeyson, really.” Phil frowns at him, and he fights back a stupid little grin. “They were taking bets on whether you were gonna murder the guy in there. Bucky stood to win forty dollars.”

“From who?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think they got that far.”

Phil hums a little in appreciation, nodding to himself, before he says, “He should try to collect.”

Clint frowns at him. He feels his face bunching before he even realizes it, and by then, it’s too late to stop. “You murdered Laufeyson?” he asks. “The guy who just walked out of there unscathed and shitty as ever?”

“Only at cell phone Scrabble,” Phil returns placidly, and man, Clint’s laughter echoes in that damn tile hallway of theirs.


	2. Five Years Minus Eighteen Months is Not Still Five Years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anarialm requested: _20 something Miles is interested in a long time friend, and so asks Bruce and Tony how they went from friendship to romance. This is the first time he finds out that didn't happen until he was there._
> 
> This veered a little off course, but I think you'll still enjoy.

“And it’s like— Ugh, this feels stupid,” Miles complains, and rubs his face with his hands.

He and Tony are sitting in the breakfast nook while Bruce deals with, well, _drama_ upstairs, and he really wants to crawl under the table and die a little. He’s twenty years old, which is about four years too old for not knowing how to talk to girls. Hell, even Ganke told him that, and Ganke’s only relationship lasted three days and was based on a mean eighth-grade dare.

Tony raises his eyebrows. “It’s like?” he prompts. Oliver, the most horrible of the family cats, weaves under his chin and lies down on his arm. He’s the first cat to ever like Tony this much. It’s weird. “C’mon, you can’t start me down a virtual happy trail—”

“Doesn’t mean what you think it means,” Miles groans.

“—of potential parental torment and then veer off down Embarrassment Lane.” He waves a hand. “It’s like _what_?”

Miles sighs. He loves his parents, but sometimes, they still treat him like he’s thirteen. He got weekly care packages his first three months of college, after all. “It’s like— When we’re together, it’s friendly and great,” he finally says, shaking his head. “But I can never tell whether it’s _just_ friendly or if she feels the same way. And what’s worse, if she doesn’t, and then I make a move for it . . . ” He really wants to groan again, but he drowns his sorrows in his soda, instead. “Ganke says I’m being crazy.”

“Has Ganke ever _had_ a girlfriend?” Tony asks.

“Not really.”

“Then he’s not a reliable source. But listen— No, seriously, don’t roll your eyes, listen.” When Miles reaches for his soda again, Tony slides the can away. “I get it, okay? Starting a relationship with a friend, a _good_ friend, it’s about the scariest thing you can do. At least, until you marry them.” Miles tries to bite down on the half-smile that threatens to take over his face, but it fails. “I mean, look at me and your dad. We were friends first. In fact, we were friends for five _very_ long, celibate years before I finally convinced him that a life with me was better than a life without. And, bonus points, he’s agreed ever since.”

“Yeah,” Miles starts to say, but then something occurs to him. He frowns. “Wait, what?”

“Me and the big guy,” Tony replies nonchalantly. He’s scratching Oliver under the chin, half-distracted. “You know all about this, how we spent all that time dancing before we finally took the plunge.”

“Before you surprised me with the plunge, you mean,” Bruce says. He looks tired and extra-harried as he walks into the kitchen. He heads straight to the counter, pours himself a cup of coffee, and tries to pat down his very messy-from-fingers-through-it hair.

“You never let me forget that, do you?” Tony asks as he moves himself and the cat into the corner so Bruce can sit down with them. 

Bruce raises his eyebrows. “You showed up in a courtroom with a marriage license, rings, and witnesses. I don’t think I could forget if I tried, given—”

“Uh, not to interrupt,” Miles says, and they stop talking to look at him. Bruce sips his coffee, Tony looks puzzled, and Miles—

Miles is a double major, and one of those majors is physics with an emphasis in astronomy. He’s pretty good with numbers. At least good enough to double-check Tony’s math. “You said five years.”

“Uh, yeah,” Tony replies. The puzzled look morphs into a frown. “Because we spent five years in a weird, sex-less, commitment-less limbo before he finally stopped postponing the inevitable.”

Bruce rolls his eyes. “This was my fault?”

“Yup,” Tony says, and steals his coffee.

“And you knew each other for five years before I moved in?”

“Yes,” Bruce replies. He reaches for his coffee mug, and Tony smacks his hand.

He’s halfway through a really huge sip when Miles, after one more moment of mental math, asks, “But how does that work out if you were _also_ together for a year and a half before I showed up?”

Tony chokes instead of swallowing.

He doesn’t spit coffee, luckily, but the coughing’s enough that it scares the cat away and turns his whole face red. Bruce blinks and lowers his eyes toward the tabletop, but he slowly starts to turn red, too. Embarrassed-red, though, the kind that starts with the tips of his ears, and—

“Oh my _god_ , you lied,” Miles blurts without really thinking. Bruce stares at the table while Tony reaches for a napkin, like that’ll save him. “Bucky said something _years_ ago about how you never would’ve hooked up except for me, but I thought he meant your wedding. You _lied_ about being together!”

“Didn’t lie,” Tony manages to force out. His voice sounds hoarse. “Silence isn’t a lie, silence—”

“We weren’t together for as long as we indicated, no,” Bruce says quietly. He plays with his watch, one of his nervous tics. “You assumed we were dating, it snowballed, and—”

“Wait,” Miles interrupts. He holds up his hands. He’s pretty sure he only picked up that habit after living with Tony for a couple years. “Were you together when I moved in?”

His parents glance at each other. Bruce’s neck turns red, too.

“Then when’d you hook up?” 

Tony opens his mouth to reply, but Bruce sends him a tight look. “Does it matter?” he asks.

“Uh, this is a fundamental truth I’ve based my _life_ around,” Miles returns. It’s not entirely true, but for the first time in months, he sees the guilt creep onto Bruce’s expression. Not that he necessarily means to guilt-trip his dad, but he maybe deserves it. A _little_. “All my friends know about you. I mean, through this whole ‘are we maybe a thing’ thing, I’ve sung your praises to—”

“Remember the first time you walked in on us?” Tony interrupts.

Bruce lets out a long, slow breath. “Tony, I don’t think—”

“Fundamental life truth, Bruce,” Tony retorts. Bruce rolls his lips together but falls silent. “Remember? I didn’t show up for dessert, you bitched about us sleeping in the next morning, got your first glimpse of naked dads?”

“First of many,” Miles grumbles. Tony quirks an eyebrow. “Yeah, sure, I remember,” he says after a couple seconds, half-shrugging. “It was the first time you stayed over, and after that, you—”

He pauses.

Tony’s eyebrow climbs higher.

“Oh, no _way_ ,” he says. Across the table, Bruce steals his coffee mug back just to stare at it. “You’re joking. There’s just no way that _that_ night was the— Your _first_.”

“Of many,” Tony replies. No, replies isn’t really good enough; he preens and beams, about as proud of himself as any human being can get, and—

“I am never taking relationship advice from you guys again,” Miles groans, and finally leans down to rest his forehead against the table.

“That might be for the best,” Bruce says gently, and pats the side of his arm.


	3. Professional Interest (as Explained by Bucky Barnes)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> megganbraddock said (not really prompting): _But it's been wriggling around in my head since you have the two Captains(America and Marvel) in MPU that the only one missing is Captain Britain. And I now I cannot get it out of my head that he's a British Barrister whom Steve, or maybe Carol, knows professionally. And one day he comes across the pond for a vaca and there is Cap-tea, or something along those lines._
> 
> And then, this happened.

“Really, Steve?” Bucky asks, staring at the tickets on the kitchen counter. 

Steve feels the color start to creep up his neck. It’s involuntary, a horrible remnant from his days as an awkward, gangly kid with no social skills. He sometimes forgets he grew out of that Steve Rogers ten years ago. “What?”

“‘A Comprehensive Perspective on the English Common Law System?’” Steve focuses very hard on cutting up cheese slices for Dot’s preschool snack the next day instead of on the way Bucky’s staring at him. “You bought tickets for this?”

“I thought it’d be fun.”

“Steve.”

“Informative?” When he glances up, Bucky’s staring him down. “I, uh,” he says, and feels the warmth bloom across his cheeks. “We’ll get CLE credit.”

“Yeah, sure,” his husband replies. He leans in and steals a piece of cheese off the cutting board. “But what’s the real reason?”

“Real reason?”

“For your sudden interest in comprehensive perspectives on English common law.”

Steve sighs and rolls his eyes. “There’s no _real_ reason,” he retorts, acutely aware of how strained his voice sounds. “It’s an interesting panel. Jessica Drew from Union County Legal Services’ll be there, a couple of our old professors, Brian, a retired judge from—”

“Brian?” Bucky repeats, and Steve loses out to his blush. He feels it blossom over the whole of his face while Bucky cackles. “Brian as in _the_ Brian? As in hot exchange student Brian?”

“Bucky—”

“The guy you swooned over for a whole semester?” Steve forces himself to roll his eyes again, and Bucky literally hoots in delight. He hates sometimes that his husband is perpetually a fifteen-year-old boy. “I swore, like, twenty times that you were gonna ask me for a thr—”

“Why can’t I have a professional interest in anyone?” Steve demands. He sets the knife down a little too hard; when he looks up from the block of cheddar he’s mangling, Bucky’s still grinning like the cat that ate an entire pet store of canaries. “Thinking the English legal system’s interesting means I want to get into Brian Braddock’s pants—”

“I think you found it interesting _because_ of his pants,” Bucky cuts in.

“—admiring Phil as a mentor means I want to, what’d you call it, ‘chew on his neck—’”

Bucky steals another piece of cheese. “He gives good neck.”

Steve snatches the cheese away from him. “That’s for the preschoolers, not for you,” he snaps, and he knows from the way Bucky raises his eyebrows exactly how petulant he’s being. He sighs and looks up at the ceiling. “For the last time,” he says very slowly, “I do not have a crush on Brian Braddock.”

“No,” Bucky retorts, dragging out the vowel like their daughter does, “but you wouldn’t mind if he was your special British boyfriend.”

“Daddy has a boyfriend?” Dot chimes in, bouncing into the kitchen. Bucky bursts out laughing hard enough that he needs to grip the counter for support, and Steve throws the piece of stolen cheese at him. Dot leans up to put her chin on the counter. “Can married people have boyfriends?”

“No,” Steve answers in the same instant that Bucky manages, “Not if they want to stay married.”

Dot frowns. “Are you getting un-married?” she asks, peering at Steve.

“No, honey,” Steve promises. Bucky succumbs to a second gale of laughter, and Steve throws another piece of cheese at him. “Your dad just thinks he’s funny.”

“Oh.” She tips her head to the side. “Can I have a piece of cheese?”

"You can have _all_ the cheese," Bucky tells her, and Steve rolls his eyes at both of them.

Bucky teases Steve about Brian Braddock for the week before the panel event—and then, for three weeks after, since Steve takes _Phil_ to the presentation, instead.


	4. Fierce Mothers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> saranoh requested: _something from Thor's POV about Jane's pregnancy_
> 
> She also had to send her prompts three times before I got them. Persistence pays off!

“You look tired,” Thor observes when Jane walks through the front door.

“Because I’m exhausted,” she answers, and shucks her coat and winter gear right in the foyer.

Thor watches her move. He’s always thought of Jane as lithe and graceful, every motion fluid and comfortable, and he supposes it’s technically still true. Now, though, she’s hampered by the weight of her pregnancy. Her belly has long since stopped being a “bump” and is now full and heavy, stretching even her maternity shirts and requiring new pants with odd elastic waistbands. 

The first time she saw him inspecting her maternity slacks, she smacked his hand. “Don’t,” she warned.

“What?”

“They’re stretchy enough. You’ll just make it worse.”

Now, some of her less-stretchy pairs leave angry marks, and she’s forced to supplement with the ones that, originally, were far too big.

She moves slowly to the couch and deposits herself onto it with a long sigh. “We spent three hours reviewing my research, and Erik still thinks there’re holes,” she says. “I don’t know what else to do. He wants me to retool some of the equations from the very beginning. Like I have time for that.”

“You will,” Thor notes. He sits down on the other end of the couch and, before Jane can complain, lifts her ankles from the coffee table and turns her against her will. She squeaks a protest—the first time he tried this after the belly emerged, she almost over-balanced herself onto the floor—but settles in once he’s finished, her back against the arm of the couch and her legs and feet in his lap. Her ankles are swollen from her day: six hours at the office, three at the university, no real time to break.

She sighs as he trails fingers along her shins. “When?” she asks, laying her head back against the arm of the couch. “I don’t remember the last time I stayed up past ten or got up before seven.”

“You’re growing a child,” he reminds her.

“Yeah, and I don’t think infants are conducive to physics, either.” He blinks at her. “You think she—”

“He,” Thor argues.

Jane nearly smiles. “You think _she_ ,” she repeats, well aware that the baby is still hiding his sexual identity from them, “is going to let me rework variables when we’re up for a midnight feed?”

“I think,” he replies, rubbing her ankle, “that he will happily feed from a bottle for his father while you sleep—and then get up to alter whatever you need to for Dr. Selvig.”

Jane sighs quietly. “Does this end with you yelling at Erik?”

“If need be.”

“Thor—”

“I do not expect there to be the need,” he clarifies. When he rubs harder, she nearly melts into the couch cushion. He smiles. “Erik knows we have a long road ahead.”

“Erik sometimes forgets I’m a human being. I think he’ll be shocked when there’s an actual baby instead of a pot-belly.” She hums in pleasure when he moves his hands to her feet. “Speaking of, she—”

“He.”

“—was at it all day. The law librarian almost stopped the elevator after a jab left me breathless.”

He frowns. “What would be the utility in stopping the elevator if you were in labor?”

“Don’t ask me, I’m not the one who panicked.” She shakes her head. “I’m actually looking forward to when she’s out of elbow space in there,” she adds, and lightly presses two fingers to the side of her stomach. Thor reaches over with a hand, waits for the inevitable return jab, and is not disappointed. 

“Perhaps our child is aware of how fierce you are,” he comments as the baby kicks again before settling.

Jane snorts something like a laugh, but darker. “I stopped feeling fierce fifteen pounds ago,” she says, and closes her eyes.

They sit silently for several minutes after that, Thor with his hands on her feet and legs and Jane with her head tipped back. The tension seeps out of her slowly, and he watches as she finally relaxes. He’d admired her long before their child existed, when she was simply a fierce young woman capable of working a full day, then several hours at the university, and then returning home in a blaze of energy and joy, but now—

Jane will be his wife in a few months. She’s giving him their child. His life feels ten times larger, and also, somehow, more beautiful.

“Thank you,” he says, quietly.

“Hmm?”

“I know this is not easy for you.” When Jane opens her eyes, something soft flies across her expression. He attempts to smile, but finds it thwarted by the strange, tight feeling deep in his stomach. “I know that, before this happened, we talked about waiting for you to finish your degree and find a teaching post. And you weren’t entirely certain you wanted to marry.” With lack of anything else to do with his hands, he squeezes her knee. “Thank you for being willing to take this chance. For me, and the baby.”

Jane breathes his name like a prayer—“ _Thor_ ,” with emphasis and something warm—and reaches for his hand. “I love you,” she says, absolute conviction in her voice and on her face. “And even if I wasn’t sure I wanted kids right now, or that I wanted to get married, I still wanted _you_.” She smiles softly at him. “I don’t get to make these choices on my own. Not when it’s our life and our child.” She pats her belly with her free hand. “And I know she’d agree with me.”

Thor chuckles lightly and shakes his head. “My mother is absolutely sure we are having a boy, Lady Jane.”

“And that’s why I’m sure we’re having a girl, Mister Odinson,” she retorts, and blinds him with a sweet, sweet smile.


	5. Boys are the Worst (Brothers, and Boy-Boys)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> uberniftacular requested: _Dot's first boyfriend. Or girlfriend._

“Dot has a boyfriend! Dot has a _boyfriend_!” Timmy keeps saying, and dancing around the living room.

“Shut up!” Dot yells, and throws one of the pillows on the couch at him. He’d started about the time Amy dropped her off at the house—seriously, Amy getting her driver’s license on her actual birthday was the greatest thing _ever_ , even if they have to get really strict permission from their parents before Dot’s allowed in the car—and now won’t stop. And all because Franklin left a message on the house phone, instead of—

“Are you going to kiss?” Timmy asks. Almost-seven-year-olds are the worst, and Timmy’s extra-horrible because he just came in from soccer and _smells_. Their dads told him to take a shower while they left to pick up the pizza, but—

Wait.

Huh.

“Dad told you to take a shower,” Dot tells him. She’s still sitting on the house phone and her cell phone so Timmy can’t try to call Franklin back. Which he did, twice, before she took them away from him. 

“Do the dads know about your boyfriend?” he retorts.

Dammit. She crosses her arms over her chest, though, and tosses her head. “Maybe they do, and maybe they don’t. What’s in it for me?”

Timmy stops mid-jig. She hates how he always comes back from soccer all amped-up and crazy. She’s suggested ten times they test him for ADHD or _something_ , but her parents just chalk it up to the crazy rivalry between him, Liam, and Max.

Plus, he does already read beginning chapter books, so maybe he’s just a weird-ass kid.

“What’s that mean?” he asks.

“What’s _what_ mean?” 

“You said something’s in it for you. What’s that mean?”

She can feel the grin spread across her face, and knows it’s the one that her dads (and Uncle Bruce) refer to as her Tony-grin. She thinks it’s sharky and sharp, but they all agree it’s pretty evil. “I mean,” she replies slowly, leaning back on the couch, “that maybe, if you go upstairs and take a shower, I’ll tell you whether the dads know about Franklin.”

Timmy squints at her. “Your _boyfriend_?” he stresses.

“Just Franklin,” she returns. He puts his hands on his hips and really peers at her. Timmy loves secrets. He loves them more than chocolate, more than staying up under his covers reading with the flashlight Dot swears she didn’t give him (he’s less annoying when he’s tired), and more than playing the stupid pirate-ninja game he and Max came up with. Secrets are his kryptonite.

And she’s dangling a huge one right in front of his face.

“A fast shower?” he asks.

“As long as you use soap and shampoo, a fast shower,” she tells him, and he bolts up the stairs. She’s almost positive he won’t use one of the two, but hey, showering on his own is a new privilege.

Their parents should know better, really.

She waits until she hears the water go on, then waits the minute or two delay that Timmy uses to make sure the water’s not too hot—there’s freaking duct-tape slivers on the tile to let him know where to turn the knobs to, seriously, it’s not that hard—before fishing her cell phone out from under her butt. The last text she sent was _brb brother_ , and the waiting response is just _k_.

From Franklin.

Who’s just this, uh, boy. In band with her. He covered for the bass drummer who sprained his ankle, is all, and he’s cute, and—

Timmy starts singing in the shower, and Dot groans. She flops over onto the couch and unlocks her phone, ready to text Amy for help instead of trying to figure out what to say to Franklin, when Franklin’s name pops up on the screen.

And she kind of, you know, accidentally thumbs the “accept” button instead of cancelling it.

At least she swallows her scream of terror before she puts the phone to her ear. “Uh, hey,” she says. She wonders if she sounds cool. She _is_ cool—she’s pretty freaking awesome, actually—but sounding it with a _boy_ is—

“Hey,” Franklin says. His voice is deep, but he sounds sort of nervous. He also clears his throat. “I’m sorry for calling your house, but you weren’t picking up your cell phone—”

“I left it in Amy’s car,” she interrupts. It’s kind of a lie. She did leave it in Amy’s car—well, not Amy’s car, it’s the family car, but you know—but only because she thought Franklin might call and didn’t know what to say to him.

“Oh. Right.” He makes another funny little sound. “Well, uh, anyway,” he says after a couple more seconds, “I know you usually hang out with your family or Amy after football games, and I’m cool with that, but a couple people were maybe going to go see that new Disney movie after the game and I didn’t know if you wanted to go.” He pauses. “I mean, not because we want to see a Disney movie, it’s a joke thing.”

Dot frowns. “That movie looks _awesome_ ,” she informs him. The princess uses a sword. And wears pants, like, all the time. Basically, it’s _Mulan_ on steroids, and Franklin’s a dumbass if he doesn’t understand that. “I’m not going to go if everybody’s just going to make fun of it, that’s—”

“It’s not a joke,” Franklin says quickly. Really quickly, actually, enough that Dot needs to pause to interpret the words. “Look, it’s not a joke, I just— I don’t want you to think I’m weird for liking Disney movies when I’m fifteen.”

“My dads owned most of the Disney movie collection before I was even born,” Dot retorts. “Disney is sort of my _thing_.” Franklin laughs, then, sounding a lot less nervous, and maybe that’s why Dot suddenly blurts, “But yeah, I’d love to go, totally.”

Blurts, and then blushes.

“Yeah?” Franklin echoes.

“Yeah,” she says.

And then realizes that her dads will _have_ to know about Franklin, now.

Uh-oh.


	6. Trial and Error

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> kayquimi requested: _You mentioned your Pepper/Natasha fic takes place during AI &OD, so what about sharing how they actually got together (unless you're planning another fic for that)_

“Please tell me this is as awful as I think it is,” Pepper Potts says.

Pepper Potts is— After a full year at the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office, Natasha still isn’t sure how to define Pepper Potts. She’s Stark’s long-suffering assistant but refuses to buy into his ridiculousness, she’s a certified paralegal but handles as much research as some attorneys, she complains about Tony’s expensive suits but wears absolutely breath-taking heels. Natasha can’t put her finger on exactly what’s so alluring about the other woman, but there’s something.

Especially since, right now, Pepper’s sipping an extremely dirty martini and peering out across the bar.

The speed dating event was Peggy’s idea, borne of an especially slow day at work, and it’s only Peggy and Maria who are still rotating from table to table. Natasha walked away after a guy guessed her cup size—don’t worry, she also “accidentally” kicked him in the shin as she stood up, and Pepper—

“Cup size guy?” she asks.

Pepper shakes her head. “‘We’d make gorgeous babies’ guy.”

“Who says that?”

“Apparently, people who don’t want the sex that comes before the babies,” Pepper returns. Natasha laughs, almost accidentally, and raises her glass. The whole event’s based around martinis, but Natasha’d annoyed the bartender by ordering a vodka tonic. They clink glasses, and she swears the bubbles tickle her nose more than usual.

Pepper considers her carefully. “Do you want to leave?” she asks.

Natasha prides herself on her composure, but in that second, she nearly chokes. “What?”

“We’re obviously not going to find anyone interesting here, I’m completely exhausted after the day I’ve had, and I know you—” She gestures lightly with her glass. “—chased a complaining witness down the block in heels. I think we both deserve a break.”

Natasha feels an itch under her skin, one she’s not entirely used to. Or rather, one she’s spent the last few years trying to chase away, since the last thing a young female lawyer needs is another person weighing her down.

Not, of course, that Pepper is suggesting anything of the sort. But Natasha briefly thinks about it anyway.

“What did you have in mind?” she asks, and Pepper smiles.

The _Fast and Furious_ movie—Natasha’s not familiar with the films or what number they’re now on—is laughably horrible in parts, but the explosions and fast cars are exhilarating in their own way. They split a bucket of popcorn and a bag of Twizzlers, Pepper jumps a little every time a car crashes and rolls before laughing at herself, and they stay until the end of the credits arguing about which scene was the least plausible.

“No one could have made that jump,” Natasha argues while Pepper untucks her feet from under her and slips her shoes back on.

“What’s the point of a movie like that if you can’t suspend your disbelief for Vin Diesel and his ridiculous arms?” Pepper retorts, and Natasha laughs at her grin.

They’ve each got a half-dozen annoyed texts from Peggy and Maria when they emerge into the warm summer night, and they gleefully agree to ignore them. The parking lot of the bar that hosted the speed dating event is mostly empty when Natasha drives Pepper back to her car, and she swings easily into a vacant spot. It’s dark when she switches off the headlights and kills the engine, but Pepper’s in the middle of a story about Tony’s glory days—“And I swear, when he handed me the t-shirt that said ‘caddy,’ I nearly beat him to death with his 4-iron!”—and Natasha doesn’t bother stopping her.

It’s only when the laughter subsides that she thinks to say, “We should do this again.”

“Sneak out of awful speed dating for horrible action movies?” Pepper asks with a grin.

Natasha chuckles. “That,” she acknowledges, “or we could skip the awful speed dating and just stick with the movie. Maybe drinks that don’t end in –tini.”

“I bet I could find a way to make you enjoy a drink that ends in –tini,” Pepper returns. Natasha turns to smile at her, but feels the smile drop away. Because Pepper’s look, the intensity in her eyes, it’s—

Natasha swallows. “It might involve a lot of trial and error,” she replies.

“I work for Tony. I’m certainly not afraid of a challenge.” 

For one lingering moment they sit together in the dark, Pepper close enough across the center console that Natasha thinks she can hear her breathing, the engine still ticking as it tries to cool down in the summer heat.

Then, softly, Pepper touches her wrist. “Goodnight, Natasha,” she says before slipping out of the car.

“Goodnight,” Natasha replies, and can feel Pepper’s fingertips for most of her drive home.


	7. Pinky-Swears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> saranoh requested: _Dot and Ganke (which you probably already figured)_

“What are you doing?” 

Ganke freezes when he hears Miles’s voice. It’s like the part of _Star Wars_ where Han Solo is sealed in the carbonite, unable to move or escape. He’s lying on his stomach on the living room floor, and he completely knows how it must look to Miles.

Across from him, Dot grins. “Playing ponies!” she announces, and knocks over Fluttershy.

Okay, wait. In Ganke’s defense, he’s only at the Stark house—the Banner house? The Stark-Banner house? What _do_ they call it?—because his mom’s visiting her sick great-aunt. He’s not entirely sure what’s wrong with the great-aunt, mostly because all the phone calls were in rapid-fire Korean and he couldn’t keep up, but he knows it’s bad. She’ll probably die, which means a whole long weekend staying at the whatever-house.

Uh, and it’ll be sad for his mom.

Oh, and then there’s Dot, who’s over because the water main at her summer babysitter’s house broke, and the only parent with any extra vacation time was Bruce, and other complicated things Ganke didn’t really follow.

That’s where Miles went, by the way: into his dad’s office, mostly just to hang out and talk, leaving Ganke alone with Dot. And, well—

“You’re playing ponies,” Miles repeats. He looks like he’s really tempted to laugh.

Ganke scrambles to sit up. “What was I supposed to do?” he demands while Miles’s shoulders start to shake. “You ditched me for quality dad-time—”

“Miles calls his daddy ‘Bruce,’” Dot explains as she brushes Rarity’s mane.

“—and left me with her. And coloring got really boring really fast!”

“You _colored_?” Miles repeats.

“Yeah!” Dot announces, and scrambles to her feet. She’s wearing a blue sundress with yellow birds on it, and her French braid’s held back with a yellow ribbon. Not, uh, that Ganke helped her fix the tail of her braid or anything. Because that’d be weird. Anyway, Dot runs over to the coffee table, grabs all the colored-in pages, and dumps them on the floor in front of Miles. “He did Cinder-elly and Belle and _look_!” She digs a piece of white paper out of the pile and—

Ganke groans and hides his face in his hands. “Dot, c’mon, what’d I say about pinky-swears?”

“And _that’s_ me,” she’s still explaining, even once the groan’s not drowning her out, “and that’s Ganke, and that’s you! I told him you had to be holding hands because best friends hold hands.”

“Do they?” Miles asks.

Ganke wants to die, just a little. 

“Yeah!” When he looks up, Dot is proudly displaying the picture she made him draw of Miles’s parents, _her_ parents (who Ganke’s only seen once, so he kind of guessed), and then, the three of them. He left all their shirts and pants as black-outlined blocks for coloring-in. Which she’s done, super-messily. Also, she’d added extra hair to his drawing-doppelganger. “I’m going to make Daddy hang it on the fridge.”

Ganke lets out a defeated sound and flops onto his back. Right there, on the floor, like a dead man. Butterfingers, who’s lying on the dog bed nearest him, stretches out to nuzzle his hand.

“You know,” Miles says after a couple seconds of what’s clearly shitty, silent, best friend laughter, “I think you should hang it on the fridge here.”

Dot clutches the picture. “But it’s mine!”

“Yeah!” Ganke agrees, sitting up too fast. The room spins for a second. “It’s hers! I made it for her. You can’t just _steal_ it and—”

“It’d be really special, then,” Miles says, ignoring Ganke completely. “Like a special surprise, every time you come over.”

Dot considers it for way too long before breaking into a huge grin. “A special picture!” she announces, and then runs into the kitchen. Butterfingers jumps up to follow.

Ganke lies back down and covers his face. “I hate you so much.”

Miles nudges him in the side. “It’s kind of nice,” he says, and Ganke peeks up at him through his fingers. “That you played with her.”

“But?” Ganke asks, because there’s always a freaking catch with Miles Morales.

“No ‘but,’” Miles answers. He holds out a hand to help Ganke up. “Just actually nice.”

Ganke lets Miles drag him to his feet and is about to suggest they all go outside or something—Dot can run around, they can discuss the relative virtues of the new _Superman_ movie, you know, normal stuff—when Dot runs back into the room. “Okay!” she says, breathless. “Now dress-up time!”

“Dress-up time?” Miles repeats.

“I am never pinky-swearing with a five-year-old again,” Ganke complains, and this time, Miles’s laughter is totally not silent.


	8. Valid Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous requested: _Phil and Clint discussing possibility of someday having their own little family?_

“You ever think about kids?” Clint asks, and Phil looks up from the computer.

It’s four days since Alec, E.J., and the twins left after their whirlwind visit to Suffolk County so E.J. could visit the local university, and in those four days, Clint’s been especially quiet. Contemplative, almost, which isn’t a word Phil normally uses to describe his better half. A better half who, right now, is flopped out across the couch and flipping back and forth through three different sports channels without really watching any of them.

Phil closes the laptop. “Is this about the twins?” 

“Nah,” Clint answers, and Phil raises his eyebrows. “Not really. I just— It was kind of a valid question, you know?”

“I know,” Phil replies. Clint’d spent most of the three days that Alec and the boys visited running around with Earl and Ernie: introducing them to his friends, feeding them ridiculous amounts of junk food, dragging them to parks and playgrounds in the spring break chill. The boys’d loved it, hanging off him like they’d discovered a second father while Phil accompanied his brother-in-law and oldest nephew on their campus tours.

But on the last day, while Phil and Alec had coffee in the kitchen, Earl and Ernie’d started grilling Clint about why he wasn’t a dad.

Apparently, Clint’s still searching for the answer.

Phil places the laptop on the end table and then stands, moving across the living room. Clint anticipates his arrival and swings his legs around to sit up; when Phil settles next to him, though, he hardly responds. Phil steals the remote, switches off the television, and then knocks their shoulders together. Clint softens, but only marginally. 

“I didn’t think you wanted kids,” he says after a few tense, silent seconds.

“I don’t, really,” Clint responds, hardly an answer at all. He shrugs, then shakes his head as though he’s chasing away the remnants of some particularly sticky train of thought. “Growing up, with all the shit with my dad and then the years with Trick, I never had a decent role model. Who wants to give a guy like that some impressionable bundle of fat rolls and drool?” His lips press into a tiny smile, but it doesn’t linger. “Add to it the fact that I was on my own ‘til recently—”

“I’m sure you would’ve found someone even without me,” Phil notes.

“—and I figured it was one of those things that wouldn’t happen even if I wanted it.” He glances over at Phil, his eyes soft. “But then Stark and Bruce got their kid, Jane popped out the baby, I got to know your nieces and nephews, and it all sort of made me wonder, I guess.”

_I guess_ is Clint’s way of dodging his actual feelings, a practiced bob-and-weave to avoid saying what’s really sitting in the center of his tongue, but Phil leaves it alone. Instead, he nods slightly and rests his shoulder against Clint’s. The longer they sit beside one another, the more Clint starts to melt into him; within a few quiet minutes, he can slide an arm behind Clint’s shoulders and drag him into his grip. “I stopped considering children around the same time I stopped dating seriously,” he admits. Clint twists to watch his face. “I grew up in a family with parents from big families, my sisters all had kids, and I—” He draws in a breath and then, slowly, releases it. “It’s hard enough to find the right person to have children with when you don’t have to worry about adoption or surrogacy. Add in those other steps, and I assumed my chance had passed.”

Clint pokes him in the leg. “Could’ve tried some sexy one-night stand with Maria, knocked her up,” he suggests. 

“The day Maria Hill voluntarily births a human being is the day I run off to join the circus,” Phil returns. Clint laughs then, free and unforced, and Phil can’t help but run a hand down his arm. “If you want to have kids,” he starts, “we can—”

“I don’t,” Clint interrupts quietly. Their eyes meet, and Phil watches him force a tiny, half-tight smile. “I think it’d be fun, you know, watching somebody grow up like that, knowing they trusted you more than anybody else in the world. But it’d be so easy to screw it up.” He shakes his head again. “I’ve seen enough people screwed up by their dads to last a lifetime, you know?”

“Yeah,” Phil replies. Clint settles against him, comfortable, leaving Phil to think about men ruined by terrible fathers. But for every Harold Barton, Enrique Riberio, or Howard Stark, he thinks of men not destroyed by their fathers: Bruce, for instance, or Clint himself. And he thinks of the sons of dead or absent parents now raising healthy, happy children like Dot Barnes and Miles.

Family, he thinks, isn’t a defining characteristic. It’s just a catalyst, a starting point you can veer away from.

“You’d be a good father,” he says softly. 

He thinks too much time’s passed, that Clint’s fallen asleep or just zoned out. But then, the other man tips his face against Phil’s shoulder and presses in close. “Probably not as good as you,” he replies, and Phil holds him a little tighter for that.


	9. Better Than Good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tinwintersoldier requested: _How do you feel about Steve and Bucky’s wedding as a prompt request?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've mentioned this on tumblr before, but for basic suspension of disbelief: the state in which MPU takes place allows gay marriage. It is legal. It has been legal for a long time. It will continue to be legal. And we're not going to discuss the existence of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. This is my sandbox. I do what I want.

Steve’s been nervous before. Honestly, Steve’s been downright terrified-to-tears before, so this really shouldn’t even register on the graph of nerve-wracking life events. He grew up a scrawny kid in public school. His grandma dressed him in high-waist pants until he turned thirteen. He once wet himself while playing a shepherd in the church Christmas pageant. This, right now, is nothing.

His hands are shaking and he feels like his knees are about to give out.

Because he’s getting married today.

Bucky’s on five days of holiday leave, ostensibly to visit his parents out in Indiana, but instead he’s in the choir room with his aunt and cousin Lana. They’re the only Barnes relatives here for the big day—his parents love him, and they like Steve okay, but a whirlwind trip to Suffolk County for a wedding and then back again during Thanksgiving’s a lot to ask—and Bucky’s off getting ready and pretending he’s not as nervous as Steve feels. Steve, who at this point’s about to pace a trench in the carpet, whose hands are sweaty and whose throat feels like it might close on him. Steve, who—

“Breathe, sweetheart,” his grandmother says for the tenth time in probably three minutes.

Steve stops, pulls in a sharp breath, and exhales.

This is the first extended leave Bucky’s had since the weekend they decided to get married, the first long enough stretch of time where Steve could plan ahead, find twenty minutes to borrow their church for the evening, and clue their (incredibly supportive and patient) pastor in on what they wanted to do. He managed to have his one good suit dry-cleaned and pressed, helped his grandmother pick out something nice to wear, and now he’s here.

Pacing while Pastor Mitchell watches with a funny little smile.

He tries to think back to a time before Bucky, but instead, he just ends up remembering all the days _with_ him. Distant, hazy memories emerge, ones of lazy walks around the neighborhood after Bucky finished playing pick-up ball with some of his buddies and of melting summer ice cream, but recent ones, too. Like when, on a whim, they went out and picked out rings on Bucky’s last brief leave, just to have them. Like lazy kisses on the porch last night because Bucky refused to stay over as some kind of pre-wedding superstition. 

He’s twenty-one years old, and he’s known Bucky for about six of them. More than a quarter of his life belongs to the man he’s about to marry, almost to the point where he can’t recall the days without him.

There’s a noise in the back of the sanctuary right then, and Steve automatically stops pacing to jerk his head up. Lana and Bucky’s aunt wave a little as they come in, and right behind them is Bucky. Bucky, who’s wearing his actual Army uniform even after he swore five different times he’d just wear slacks and a button-down or something.

Steve forgets how to breathe. When he remembers, he’s forced to do it around this stupid lump in his throat. Every time he exhales, his whole body shakes. Every time he blinks, he thinks his eyes might be wet. 

It’s a small church, meaning there’s not much distance to cross before Bucky’s standing in front of him. “You good?” he asks, and his voice wavers.

“Yeah,” Steve says, but he’s not sure about the answer.

_Good_ really doesn’t begin to cover it, after all.


	10. Fuzz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> pastelandcomicbooks wrote: _I remember that you implied that Clint really likes chest hair, and I know that being in a serious relationship does not preclude you from being attracted to other people. So, what does Clint think of Bruce? Come to think of it, has he ever even see Bruce's chest?_
> 
> I do not know if this was a prompt request or just a Motion Practice Friday question, but, well. This happened.

Clint nearly walks into Miles, and all because Bruce’s taken his shirt off.

It’s a summer pool party, the same as every other summer pool party that Tony’s ever thrown, but this is the first time in recorded history that Bruce’s actually climbed into the pool. Dot’d spent the first hour of the party whining that she needed to swim with him, a battle she’s apparently won, but Clint—

Clint’s never seen Bruce except in his button-downs, sweaters, and the occasional t-shirt.

Meaning Clint had no idea how much _man_ was hiding under all those baggy, frumpy shirts.

He’s vaguely aware he’s staring, but it feels mostly like an out of body experience, especially as Bruce disappears under the choppy surface of the water. He reemerges, glistening wet, and Clint—

“I suspected you liked them a little fuzzy, but _that_ is ridiculous.”

Clint spills beer down the side of his hand as he twists to stare at Natasha. She’s wearing a slinky black strapless bathing suit, all one piece and all clinging to her curves, and he can’t stop himself from appreciating the whole package. At least, not until she snaps her fingers right in front of his nose and he jerks his head up. “You look at me like that after drooling over Bruce, a girl might get a complex.”

He rolls his eyes. “I wasn’t drooling.”

“Your chin practically bounced off the patio.”

“Only because I thought Bruce was a never-nude or something.” She quirks an eyebrow at him, and he shakes his head. “Wade,” he says, as though that explains everything.

“And what’s _his_ ratio of bare skin to drool-inducing chest hair, I wonder?”

“I wasn’t drooling,” Clint repeats, and Natasha laughs at him before patting him on the arm and wandering off. 

He spends the half hour that Bruce’s in the pool and _then_ the forty-five minutes he’s out and drip-drying trying not to stare, diving into conversations with other people, but nobody’s perfect.

Clint’s driving them home from the party hours later when Phil’s phone chimes, interrupting their conversation. He fishes it out of his pocket, glances at it a few times, and then slowly frowns. “What?” Clint asks as he turns back to the road.

“Tony just texted me,” Phil replies.

“So?”

“So, all it says is, ‘I don’t share but Barton can watch.’”

Clint nearly blows through a red light. “Stark’s insane,” he says, and pretends his voice doesn’t catch. Beside him, Phil raises an eyebrow. “What?”

“Nothing,” Phil returns.

Except, the next day, Phil spends literally six hours shirtless without any explanation.


	11. Proper Prior Planning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous requested: _Tony, Bruce, and the should we give/adopt Miles some siblings question_
> 
> This is not fully on point for the request, but I think it speaks volumes for their future plans, so I hereby declare it good enough.

“Uh,” Bruce says, and re-reads the e-mail on his phone in case he missed something.

“Okay, so, here’s the thing: I’m good and everything, and I _know_ I’m good, but I’m not sure last night was render-you-speechless-into-the-next-morning good.” Tony crowds behind him at the kitchen counter, reaching around to put a steaming mug of coffee in front of him, and then molds to his back. The contact’s warm and welcome, a familiar weight and heat even through their pajamas, and Bruce almost forgets about the e-mail entirely.

He definitely forgets when Tony kisses the back of his neck, and then the _side_ of his neck, and—

“Why do you guys make out in _every_ room?” Miles demands. Bruce jerks away from the counter while Tony laughs, catching the brief glimpse of a thirteen-year-old in a t-shirt and white socks but no jeans. He’s wearing smiley-face boxers. 

“Because I own all the rooms!” Tony shouts back, and Bruce sighs as he reaches for his coffee. The e-mail still stares up at him, black font on the white background, and Bruce dips his head to scan it again. “Bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, laundry room, garage, all of them for me and your dad—” 

“Please stop talking!” Miles’s yell is muffled by him digging through the dryer.

“—to have enthusiastically-consensual grown-up fun in!” Tony finishes, especially loud. Bruce rolls his eyes at the victory-arms over his head, and then again at the grumbling sight of Miles and his balled up blue jeans that—

“Are those clean?” Bruce asks as Miles passes by.

“They’re not dirtier than you and Tony,” he retorts, and then rushes up the stairs.

Tony laughs at that, and Bruce’ll admit to the little chuckle that creeps up his throat before he’s back to scrolling through the information on his phone. He hears Tony moving around the kitchen behind him, then wandering to let the dogs out, and he assumes he’s alone for a few minutes.

At least, until Tony’s shoulder presses against his from behind. “Everything okay?” he asks. His voice is softer this time, no demanding tease, and Bruce wonders exactly how serious an expression’s crept across his face.

“Yeah,” he answers, and finally closes out of his e-mail box. When he turns around, Tony’s frowning at him. He’s armed with his own coffee mug this time, the House Stark one from Bruce’s collection of mismatched dishware, but he holds onto it rather than drinking. 

Bruce knows he won’t be able to sneak around this. Whether he wants to is another story entirely. 

“Jessica Jones e-mailed me,” he says after a few long seconds.

Tony’s face softens, almost going slack. “Not about Miles?”

Bruce hadn’t even paused to consider that Jessica was Miles’s social worker, so he immediately shakes his head. “No,” he answers quickly. “Not about Miles. More about us, I guess.”

The creases climb back onto Tony’s brow, and around his mouth and eyes. “Us?”

“The home study we completed for the adoption is technically the same information they use to approve foster homes,” he explains. He glances back at his Blackberry as though there might be further guidance waiting there, but of course, there isn’t. “My license technically lapsed as soon as I married you and moved, because my information was no longer accurate,” he continues, “but now all the new data’s in the system for both of us.”

He watches Tony wet his lips, a slow swipe of pink tongue. “Meaning?”

“Meaning, if we wanted, we could be licensed as foster parents. Together.”

For a few long seconds—seconds that feel almost interminable, seconds that drag on for what might be hours—Tony’s expression is entirely unreadable. Bruce suddenly feels foolish for even asking, and he ends up staring into his own coffee. Tony never signed up to be a foster parent, more stumbled upon the experience due to his irrepressible curiosity. Falling in love with one kid—sweet, loveable, lonely Miles—certainly didn’t mean he’d want to open himself up to more of the same. Or that they’d even be good at it together, given that becoming parents to their son was a ridiculous, beautiful accident that Bruce sometimes still doesn’t believe is real.

He’s about to say all those things, too, when Tony says, “Let’s do it.”

Bruce jerks his head up just in time to see Tony close the distance between them. He’s abandoned his mug on the island and reaches forward to confiscate Bruce’s, too, until their hands are empty. Empty, but full a second later, because Tony plasters his hands on Bruce’s sides and leaves Bruce to find his hips. He’s wearing low-slung pajama pants with a sleeveless, ribbed undershirt. Bruce sincerely hopes he plans to change before driving Miles to school. 

Bruce also sincerely hopes he can remember how to form sentences, because the only word his lips recognize in that moment is, “Yeah?”

“Uh, of course ‘yeah,’” Tony returns. He presses all the way into Bruce’s personal space until they’re nearly flush from the knees up. “We’re kind of awesome at this child-rearing thing. We’ve got the money, we’ve got the flexibility with work, we’ve got friends who’ll back us up when shit hits the fan in some glorious manner.”

“Or when you forget paperwork?” Bruce asks. He knows he’s nearly smiling, and the grin it brings to Tony’s face is blinding. It’s the first time he’s brought up the intake without the tiny spike of incoherent anger. 

He likes the change.

“Especially when I forget paperwork,” Tony returns, and drags his thumbs along Bruce’s t-shirt. “I mean, if you’re not into it, that’s cool,” he adds in a tone of voice that suggests he’d actually be disappointed. “If you wanna wait until Miles’s stuck around for a while, if you want tougher rules about what kinds of kids we take, we can do that. But I kind of don’t think we should stop.”

Bruce presses down on the corners of his smile and, for a second, just watches Tony. He tries to imagine the man other people envision Tony to be—the playboy, the big-shot, the uncontrollable lawyer, the genius whiz-kid son of Howard Stark—but all he actually sees is his husband.

“Let’s give it a few months,” Bruce says finally, ignoring the way Tony’s smile slips even though he knows it won’t last. “Miles needs to settle in, and really, we do, too.”

Tony narrows his eyes. “Are you subtly complaining about month eight of amazing newlywed sex?” he asks.

“Not since it stopped rendering me speechless the next morning, no.” Bruce laughs as Tony tries to reach around and pitch him through his sweatpants. “But I want to make sure that, if we keep doing this, everyone’s on the same page. Both of us, our friends, and Miles.”

“Miles’ll be cool with it,” Tony replies immediately. Bruce frowns. “No, seriously. Any kid who’s okay with his parents making out in front of him on a regular basis’ll be cool with a foster sibling popping up in his life every once in a while.”

And for all his training as a person who, professionally, changes lives with his words, the only response Bruce can muster is, “We don’t make out _that_ regularly.”

“Oh yeah?” Tony challenges, and then, before Bruce can respond, kisses him.

He kisses him long and lingering, the taste of coffee on his tongue, and then nuzzles the side of Bruce’s face with his nose. His stubble buzzes against Bruce’s, almost burning, and hands slide under Bruce’s t-shirt. Bruce is seriously considering kissing him again, dragging out a lazy morning before work, when he hears an earth-shattering groan.

“Seriously, _again_?” Miles demands, and Bruce ducks away from Tony to laugh. “Get a room!”

“All the rooms are still my rooms,” Tony reminds him, and Bruce shoves him away when, laughing, he tries to steal another kiss.


	12. About Bucky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anarialm requested: _The wedding fic made me want more of Steve's grandma. Maybe when Steve first comes out/ she finds out he and Bucky are a Thing?_

“Can we, uhm, talk?” Steve asks his grandma.

He knows it’s a topic of ridicule at school, something he’s mocked for behind his back almost as much as to his face, but he loves his grandma. He’s lived with her for almost as long as he can remember, ever since his dad died back when he was little and his mom couldn’t afford to keep the house. She watched him while his mom worked second shifts at the restaurant, then when his mom got sick, and she never batted an eye at raising him afterward. They’re almost as close as a mother and son, which is why this is so terrifying.

“Always, honey,” his grandma says, stirring the tomato sauce she’s spent half the day working on. “Just pass me the basil first.”

He smiles a little before fishing the shaker off the spice rack and handing it over, but then, the nerves creep into his stomach again. He’d spent the whole day out at Bucky’s aunt’s—she’d needed to work, meaning they’d spent all that time _alone_ and, uhm, doing the things you do when you’re alone with the guy you like—only to come home feeling monumentally guilty. Because, well, this is his grandma, and she trusts him.

She trusts _Bucky_.

And if Bucky’d been a girl, and he’d spent all afternoon unsupervised with her, then—

“Steve?” his grandma asks quietly. She’s a short woman with a shock of white hair that she keeps curled. She’s still holding the spoon, but she’s no longer stirring. “Are you all right? Did something happen?”

“No,” he answers, “I, uh, just—”

“If this is about that D on your math test, Miss Jennings already called me about it.”

Steve feels color climb up his face. He’d meant to let her know about that, honest. “Not the test,” he answers. When she keeps staring at him, he drags fingers through his hair. “This is more about Bucky.”

His grandma sighs and shakes her head. “I wish that boy’d go ahead and call himself James,” she chides, turning back to the stove. “He sounds like something out of a Western with that nickname.”

Steve bites back a little laugh. It feels hysterical, the way he bubbles up, but he’s also struck with a crazy, almost irrational love for his grandmother. “He’s not really a James.”

“No human is a ‘Bucky,’” she retorts. “At any rate, what about him?”

“Uhm,” Steve says, and wets his lips. He wishes he’d thought this through, planned it better, because his heart’s pounding and his chest feels tight. Not asthma-tight, not like he needs to rush out of the room and find his inhaler, but in a way, that makes it worse.

There’s nothing he can do besides tell her, after all. No way out but through.

“Me and Bucky, we’ve been friends for a while,” he says, dragging fingers through his hair again. “And being friends was good and everything, but a couple weeks ago, we sort of figured out that we kind of wanted to be more than friends.”

His grandma stops stirring and, very slowly, twists to face him. Her expression’s blank, like fresh paper in his sketchbook or white canvas in the art room at school, and he feels his stomach drop. Worse, his eyes sting something horrible. 

“Meaning?” she asks. Her voice is totally calm, but that’s even scarier.

“Meaning,” he echoes, and looks at the floor. The pattern on the tile starts blurring, and he closes his eyes. “It wasn’t on purpose,” he says after a couple seconds, and he hates the way his voice shakes. “He just— We kissed, a couple times, and then it all sort of kept going. I didn’t even know it was happening until it _happened_ , but it was already too late. And I’ve never felt like this about anyone, but I didn’t know how to tell you. I—” 

His voice cracks like he’s twelve again, stupid and prepubescent, and he drags the back of his wrist across his face. When he pulls his head up, his grandma’s still staring at him, but her expression is softer. Careful, like she’s looking at a baby bird that fell out of the nest and trying to figure out if it’d survive being picked up. 

“I don’t want you to be mad,” he tries to say, but it comes out as this breathy whisper. “I just think that maybe I kind of—” He swallows, and his next breath trembles. “I think I maybe love him, even though that might mean you won’t.”

He only realizes he’s looked away when he hears her murmur, “Steve,” but he can’t bring himself to raise his chin. He’s shaking, his whole body, and he suddenly wants to throw up. She’s his grandma, she’s his only person before Bucky, but now he _has_ Bucky, and—

“Steve, look at me,” she says, and when he finally brings his head up, she’s smiling.

She turns the heat on the stove way down to its lowest setting, rests the spoon on a trivet, and walks over. Before Steve can wipe his eyes or straighten his posture, she wraps him up in one of the tightest hugs she’s ever given. It reminds Steve of the hug after his mother died, fierce and immediate, and he sinks into it.

“Sweetheart, there is nothing in this life or the next you could do to make me stop loving you,” she soothes, and Steve tries not to crumble at those words murmured into his ear. “Even if I hadn’t noticed you mooning over that boy _months_ ago, even if this was a complete surprise, I would not give up on you for the world. You understand me?” When his only response is a stupid sniffle, she grips his arms hard and steps back. “Steven Rogers, do you understand me?”

He forces a little smile as he nods, then ducks his head so he can wipe his nose on the shoulder of his t-shirt. She scowls at him for that. “You knew?” he asks after a couple seconds, once he feels like he can breathe again.

His grandma’s smile blooms full and warm. “I told Myrtle who does my hair about how smitten you were with that boy after the second time you brought him over,” she says, pulling him into another hug. “I think I knew before you did.”


	13. Divorce Remorse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> saranoh and I were discussing thoughts that arose as I worked on family law essays for bar prep, which turned into this: _I officially request a ficlet about Maria and her divorce. Done and done._

“I’m going to actually murder him,” Maria growls, and slams her cell phone onto her desk.

Slamming it once isn’t nearly satisfying enough, so just to be sure, she picks it up and slams it down again. Everything around it—pens, post-it pads, her box of tissues—jumps, and that feels better. She checks the hallway to make sure no one’s coming and slams it a third time, just in case. But three becomes four, then six, and when she looks up, Jasper Sitwell’s standing in her doorway with an amused expression. 

“A pitbull ate mine and Fury wouldn’t replace it,” he says. When Maria frowns at him, he gestures to her phone. “I’m sure it’s being a piece of shit, but so you know.”

She opens her mouth to thank him, and even to maybe apologize—after all, she did just try to take out all her worldly frustration on an inanimate object—when her phone buzzes. Once, twice, then another handful of times, and every last message is from Mark Chapel. She presses ignore on all of them, one after another, and only realizes she’s muttering, “I don’t care about your fucking stocks, Mark, I hope you die in a slow-burning fire,” when Jasper clears his throat.

“Rough day?” he asks. 

“Ex-husband,” Maria replies, and drops into her chair. She thinks for a second that Jasper looks surprised, even baffled, but she can’t really be bothered to explain. Not many people at the office know she’s divorced, and the ones who do—Phil, Nick, Peggy, Pepper, Natasha—tend to forget. She hardly knows Jasper, and definitely not well enough to divulge personal information, but she lacks the ability to care, right now.

Mark texts her again and she turns her phone upside-down, just to avoid looking at his fucking name.

“You want me to rough him up?” 

She jerks her head up to find Jasper still standing there, watching her. His lips twitch into a tiny smile, and he lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “It’s a service I can provide. Free of charge.”

“Better than burning down the ING office in town, I guess,” she says. He cocks his head a half-degree, and she sighs. “We split these stocks we had,” she explains, rubbing her temples. “I wanted to sell them all, he wanted to keep them, so I basically let him cherry-pick the ones he liked and we offset the rest with other property.” She suddenly wants a drink. No, she wants ten drinks. “He wants to re-open the judgment because the stupid stocks’ve dropped in value.”

“Can he do that?” 

“No. But he can threaten to, the same way he threatens to every time my name shows up in the newspaper and he’s filled with divorce remorse.” Her phone buzzes again. She grabs it, shuts it off, and then shoves it across her desk. Jasper steps forward to catch it before it falls on the floor. “It’ll end in a very awkward dinner where he tells me he misses me and I day-dream about eviscerating him.”

Jasper holds out the phone. “He sounds like a real fucking jackass.”

She snorts. “You have _no_ idea.”

“No. He honestly sounds like a whole new level of shitty human being.” When she lifts her head from her hands, he’s watching her. At least, for a second; then, he drops his eyes and shrugs. “Instead of manning up and admitting he lost something amazing, he’s being a giant asshole _and_ pissing you off.” He sends her a tiny smile. “Didn’t marrying you clue him in that he shouldn’t do that?”

“Apparently not,” she replies, and watches him for a minute. He wiggles her phone, and she reaches across the desk for it. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Better you yell about him than actually kill him. Nobody wants to see _State versus Hill_.”

She tries to chuckle, but it fails. Instead, she drops her phone into a drawer, closes it, and leans all the way back in her chair. “You’re not married or anything, are you?”

Jasper hesitates for a half-second before answering, “No.”

“Good.”

“Good?” he repeats. Maria thinks maybe his voice stumbles.

“Ever since Mark found out Phil’s gay, I’ve lacked an ‘I have a new boyfriend and have therefore moved on’ story to throw in his face. This time, I think I’ll use your name.” She watches Jasper shift his footing slightly. “Unless you’re gay,” she amends, because he looks pretty fidgety all of a sudden.

“No fucking way,” he replies immediately, and she grins at him. “I think this office’d collapse in on itself if I was part of that crew.”

She laughs. “And it leaves us girls with some hope,” she tells him.

“Hope, yeah,” he echoes, and she finds herself a little caught by the way he looks at her before he lets himself out.


	14. The Green-Eyed Monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mrsunderhill requested: _Clint, jealous and pissed at himself for being jealous._

It’s just a robbery trial.

Clint repeats it to himself like a mantra, like one of those prayers chanted by monks in Tibet: just a robbery trial, just a robbery trial, just a robbery trial. Guy rolled up to a 7-11, waved a baseball bat, ran off with the money. Only reason he won’t plea is ‘cause his criminal history’s through the roof and he wants to avoid prison if he can. Trial’ll be two days, tops, and then Phil’ll stop working ten- and twelve-hour days.

With fucking Barry the intern.

There’s no reason to dislike Barry, and Clint knows it. The guy’s twenty-five, pretty smart, maybe a little smarmy. He works hard, he writes well, and he wants to learn. He’ll be a good prosecutor with some more experience and a minor attitude adjustment. Clint’s usually cool with him.

Except a week ago, passing by the intern office, he’d overheard Barry tell Skye (yeah, that’s her name, all right) that Phil “was kind of hot for a guy in his forties.” Barry, who’d spent two-thirds his time in the office flirting with Skye like words alone could ruck up her skirt. 

Yeah.

On a personal level, then, Barry’s a shit and Clint wants to smack him.

What’s worse, Barry’s the second chair for this robbery trial, working all those ten-plus hour days with Phil. Twice, when Clint’d stopped by to talk with Phil—once bringing him coffee, once offering to pick up lunch—he’d walked in on Barry leaning in close, his shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows and his perfect hair falling onto his forehead. Like a younger, slimmer Steve Rogers, blond and inescapably hot, and Clint’d tensed in the doorway both times.

Worse, he’d grit his teeth when _Barry_ grinned and said, “Hi, Clint!”

And worst of all, both times, Phil’d just raised an eyebrow.

It’s all stupid. It’s juvenile and petty, and Clint bangs around his kitchen in the stupid eight p.m. twilight, trying to find a damn coffee can. He wants to stay up and wait for Phil, but he needs caffeine for that. Apparently, he’s out.

He finds a can in the back corner of a cabinet, opens it, and discovers it’s a bunch of extra IKEA nuts and bolts. He swears, slams the can onto the counter, and glares at it.

He and Phil’ve been together for, what, seven months? Eight? A solid number, the kind where petty bullshit surrounding interns shouldn’t crawl under his skin. Phil’s not a cheater or a jackass, and Barry values his job. Nothing creepy’s gonna happen.

But Phil’s worked late for four days straight and Clint misses him.

And Barry’s a smarmy bastard.

He’s still staring into the mess of nuts and bolts when he hears a key scrape in the lock, so he drags a hand over his face to wake up and goes about sealing the coffee can. By the time Phil makes it into the kitchen, he’s stripped out of his coat, tie, and shoes; his sleeves are rolled up, his collar hanging open, and he looks like sex: a little disheveled and a lot perfect. He sets a plastic grocery bag down on the counter, and Clint’s allowed one second to register that there’s a Folgers can inside before Phil hooks fingers under the waistband of his jeans, pushes him into the nearest counter, and kisses him.

Clint grunts a little on impact, but Phil’s lips are hot and demanding. He sighs into the kiss and Phil immediately coaxes his way into Clint’s mouth, wet and wonderful. By the time they pull apart, which is a long damn while later, they’re both panting and Clint’s pulled Phil’s shirt tails out of his pants.

Also, someone’s popped the button on Clint’s jeans. Clint can’t remember who.

“Today,” Phil says, breathless and hoarse, “has been ridiculous, and I want to forget it.”

Despite himself, Clint sort of grins. He knows how crooked and ridiculous it is by the way Phil grins back. “Yeah?”

“Yes _please_ ,” Phil replies, and Clint reels him in by the belt to kiss him hard and fast.


	15. Collateral Damage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous requested: _We've had Tony being embarrassing in public, can we have some Bruce being intentionally embarrassing in public for Miles?_
> 
> This was hard to write because Bruce does not naturally trend toward embarrassing his child. At least, not publicly. He more likes to needle his son in private. Therefore, this is not really intentional embarrassment. But Miles is certainly embarrassed.

“Please don’t,” Miles groans, and covers his face with his hands.

They’re standing outside his science teacher’s classroom, under all the stupid diagrams of plant and animal cells they worked on last week, but he really wants to grab Bruce by the arm and drag him away. His friends are down the hallway, all gossiping, and he knows they’re talking about him. He can imagine all the whispers floating down the hall toward them, almost like he has a sixth sense for his nosy friends:

_Why’s Miles’s dad here?_

_That’s not the rich one, is it?_

_If they’re married, I think that means they’re both rich._

_Does it freak Miles out that his dads are gay?_

_Uh, his dads are awesome._

(The last one, obviously, is Ganke, because that’s all Ganke ever says about Bruce and Tony.)

Bruce stops, his hand almost on the doorknob to Miss Prior’s classroom, and turns to look at Miles. Turns slowly, like someone’s advancing him frame-by-frame, and Miles slouches against the lockers.

“Please,” he says, kind of desperately. He’s sure he can hear his friends murmuring, now.

“You got a D on that test, Miles,” Bruce says, totally calmly. He’s always calm, except occasionally with Tony. It actually freaks Miles out.

“And you just need to _sign_ it,” Miles repeats for the sixth time. “You sign it, I turn it in, everybody’s happy.”

“Except you showed me your answers, and they were _right_.” Bruce leans on the last word and Miles dips his head to the floor. “You missed a few problems, but not two-thirds of them. You deserved at least a B.”

“But I can talk to her,” Miles says. He’s gone through this with Bruce three times: once last night, once this morning, and once on their way into the building. He feels like he’s a broken record. Also, he’s pretty sure he can’t look Bruce in the eye. “You sign it, then I talk to her, and maybe she’ll change my grade.”

“That’s not your job,” Bruce replies. “I’m your legal parent and therefore, your educational advocate. Because I’m your educational advocate, I need to approach your teacher about this, and—”

Bruce keeps talking about legal stuff involving education and advocates, things that are sort of above Miles’s understanding, and Miles stares at the floor. He needs to come clean. He _knows_ he needs to come clean, because otherwise, what happens in Miss Prior’s classroom’s going to be a _lot_ worse than what he gets at home. He’s had his cell phone privileges revoked before. He can handle some yelling like a man.

But they’d both looked so disappointed in the D, then so mad about the right answers, and Miles hadn’t known how to tell them what’d really happened. And now—

“You can wait in the hallway if you want,” Bruce is saying, and Miles jerks his head up so fast he almost bangs it on the lockers, “but your teacher needs to know that—”

“I cheated,” Miles blurts.

The words aren’t loud, but they definitely get the message across, because Bruce stops talking. He freezes right there, his mouth open and his eyes trained on Miles like laser beams. Miles swallows around the lump in his throat, but nothing happens. Bruce never moves, his friends never stop murmuring, and Miles—

Miles really can’t deal with this frozen thing.

“Bree didn’t study,” he says, because Bruce is still not moving. Miles wonders if he’s even breathing. “She freaked out, and I let her copy, so Miss Prior marked all the problems between when we started the test and when she caught me wrong.” He rubs the back of his neck. “She said she wanted me to tell you guys about it myself, which is why she put the signature line on there. I just—didn’t.”

There’s one second of really heavy, uncomfortable silence before Bruce repeats, “You cheated.” It’s almost a whisper.

“Yeah,” Miles murmurs.

“You _cheated_?” Bruce says again, and that’s not a whisper at all. No, it’s _loud_ , it echoes down the hallway off lockers and tile, and Miles flinches as he stares at the floor. He knows his friends aren’t talking anymore, not now. Or, if they are, they’re talking about how he’s about to get shredded into tiny bite-sized pieces by a really pissed-off dad. “No, you know what? I’m not even angry about the cheating, I’m angry that you _lied_ to us,” Bruce amends. He points a finger at Miles, realizes he’s doing it, and curls it back into his fist. “Tony and I spent an hour last night talking about how to approach your teacher. I took time off _work_ to sit down and meet with her.” He turns like he’s going to walk away, then looks back at Miles. “This is _unacceptable_ , you know that?”

Miles feels all of ten inches tall. He shoves his hands into his pockets. “Yeah,” he mutters.

“This is a—a _major_ breach of trust,” he continues, and seriously, Miles wants to shrink and disappear. “I can’t— There are not words, right now, for how disappointed I am in you, Miles. None.”

Bruce walks past him then, toward the front doors, and Miles watches him retreat for a couple seconds before he realizes that, uh, that’s his ride and he’s leaving. He scrambles to catch up, falling into step behind Bruce, and catches all of his friends staring. Ganke, Judge, Katie, and Bree—Bree, who got him into this trouble in the first place, because he kind of didn’t know what to do with a cute girl wanting to cheat off him—look away while he walks past. He feels like he’s in a cop show, under arrest for something bad while everybody who thinks they know him stand around and watch.

He wants to crawl into his t-shirt and never come out.

Bruce is silent the whole way home. When they get to the house, he points to the table right inside the door and Miles leaves his cell phone there, just like last time he lost phone privileges. He sort of knees the dogs out of the way and slinks up the stairs, after that.

He considers turning out his bedroom lights and climbing under the covers, but he just drags out his books to do homework, instead. He’s working ahead in math when Tony comes home, and is about four stories ahead in their literature book when someone finally knocks on his door.

He thinks it’s probably Tony, but instead, Bruce peeks his head in. “Can I come in?” he asks. Quietly, like he’s the one who should be embarrassed about all this.

Miles shrugs. “Sure,” he says, and finds a random gum wrapper to mark his place. His room’s kind of a mess, but he’ll clean while he’s grounded, since he figures that’ll last for at least half of his natural life.

Bruce nods before he opens the door all the way, then comes around to sit on the edge of Miles’s bed. Miles picks at a frayed bit of his book cover, rather than looking up. He’s not sure he can deal with Bruce’s disappointed face any more today.

Finally, though, Bruce sighs. “I’m sorry for yelling at you in front of your friends,” he says quietly, and Miles drags his eyes up. Bruce actually looks really sorry, like he’s ashamed of himself. “I was—I _am_ —disappointed in you. For cheating in the first place, and then for lying to Tony and me about it.” Miles stares at his textbook again. “But I lost my temper, and that’s unacceptable.”

“Well, I did let you get totally pissed at Miss Prior,” Miles admits.

Bruce snorts. “Tony wanted to blaze in there and demand her teaching certificate on a pike. You’re lucky I won the coin toss.”

Miles kind of smiles, this stupid, relieved thing that comes from his dad not being completely and unforgivably pissed off at him. “It’s maybe okay that you yelled,” he says after a couple seconds. “I mean, Judge might stop calling you fluffy.”

Bruce frowns. “He calls me fluffy?”

“ _All_ the time. It’s kind of weird. I try not to talk about you too much around him.”

There’s a second where Bruce says absolutely nothing, but then he smiles. Not an evil smile, just this weird, small thing that trips across his face. “And here,” he says, “I figured all your friends would have crushes on Tony.”

“Oh, okay, _ew_!” Miles retorts, and before he really thinks about it, he grabs his pillow and smacks Bruce with it. Bruce laughs, tries to dodge a second smack, and completely fails. They end up playing tug-of-war over it for a couple minutes. Bruce is grinning, though, warm and not at all pissed off, and Miles thinks maybe everything’s okay.

Even if he’s totally grounded for the next half of his life, or whatever.


	16. Darcy Lewis, Darcy Lewis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> uberniftacular requested: _Also! Based on a discussion we had a really long time ago, can we have some nerdfighter!Darcy?_

“What are you doing to that book?” Clint asks, because he’s a heathen and fails to understand the amazingness in front of him.

Sitting in Darcy’s loving embrace is her perfect, unblemished, and freshly-signed copy of _Will Grayson, Will Grayson_ , a book that is absolutely not her favorite but still in about her top twenty-five of non-paranormal YA novels. She’d pulled it out of her bag just to behold its glory one more time, not that Clint cares. No, all Clint cares about is that she’s there, exhausted from flying home at 6:30 a.m. (seriously, who the fuck thought that _that_ was an appropriate time for a plane to take off?) and doing his usual bidding. He never even asked how her trip went.

Of course, he’s also super frazzled. And the fact he wore the tight gray pants today mostly makes up for it.

She strokes the book cover. “Don’t listen to him,” she murmurs. “He doesn’t understand our love.”

“Do me a favor and look up the statutes on committing someone involuntarily,” he retorts, gathering his folders off her desk. “I wanna start the mental health petition.”

Darcy flips him off, he grins, and the day continues apace.

She’s on her lunch break and halfway through Super Mario Brothers Wii U (or whatever) video when Clint comes up and raps her lightly on the top of the head. At least, she assumes it’s Clint; Steve never touches her except on the arm, and Bucky’s more the elbow-jab type. She pulls off her headphones and looks up.

“So, seriously,” he says. His tie’s loose and there’s something red on his shirt. Salsa from Mexican with Wade, then. “What’s with the book?”

“What book?” she asks.

“Uh, the one you molested this morning?”

She laughs a little and snags her coffee off a pile of papers. She’s practically mainlining the stuff, but it’s that or fall asleep on her keyboard in a puddle of drool. “Remember how I went to Chicago to visit my cousin?”

Clint frowns. “Vaguely,” he says, clearly meaning no. 

Darcy rolls her eyes. Only he could forget why she was gone for three entire days. “Well, I didn’t just go to see my cousin. This author I like was doing a talk and then a signing, and he signed this.” She strokes the shiny, beautiful, un-bent and un-creased cover of _Will Grayson, Will Grayson_. “And now, my collection’s complete.”

“Collection of what?” he asks. “Is this like that movie where you’ve gotta get an old priest, a young priest, something borrowed, and something— Ow!”

She swings the file folder at him for a second time but he jumps out of the way. Agile bastard. No wonder Coulson sticks with him; that elegant jumping-grace must have some most excellent bedroom applications. “My collection,” she corrects him, “of autographed John Green books.”

Clint leans an elbow on the top of her cubicle wall. “You know I don’t have any idea who that is, right?” When she glances over, he holds up his hands; she must look pretty pissed for that quick a defensive reaction. “I can only keep up with so much of your crazy stuff. Doctor Who, the ponies, those girls in the weird tutus—”

“Sailor Moon,” she corrects, because seriously, Clint.

He waves her off with a hand. “I can’t understand all of your fifty-billion obsessions. It’s confusing.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “But you’ve watched every episode of _Toddlers and Tiaras_ with your boyfriend,” she says.

He shrugs, but his smile is definitely not footloose or fancy free. “Because that’s useless trivia that can get me laid,” he replies, and then walks away.

In the end, then, that’s probably why Darcy sends him a vlogbrothers video every day for four weeks.

Maybe.


	17. Gotta Get Down on (Black) Friday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous requested: _The MPU goes Black Friday shopping? Like Steve and Bucky throwing elbows at Toys R Us and Clint getting lost in a crowded mall trying to find Phil?_

“We could have been sleeping,” Bucky complains, dodging out of the way of a Transformers toy that literally flies over his head. “We could have been sleeping, in our bed, stuffed full of turkey—”

Steve grabs him and drags him out of the way of a woman laden with Barbie products.

“—instead of being awake. Now. _Here_.”

“It’s the complete Merida playset,” Steve reminds him, and drags him out of Toys ‘R’ Us by the wrist.

Bucky’s served abroad, in the army, during wartime, and still nothing holds a candle to Black Friday at the mall. It’s like a special circle of hell, crawling from floor to ceiling with insane people. He’s seen better-organized, less-destructive riots.

He wants to blame Steve, but he really can’t. Because Clint’d started it, talking about some extra-shiny Blu-Ray _something_ he wanted to buy Phil for Christmas, and then Tony’d babbled about a Lego thing for Bruce’s foster kid (even though Bucky’s pretty sure they’re not supposed to buy presents for him), and here they all are: he, Steve, Clint, and Tony, running through the mall, while Bruce, Dot, and Miles all snore away at Tony’s.

Something’s unfair about this.

“We already got her a bike,” Bucky complains as they dodge and weave through people on the escalator.

“She wants the playset,” Steve returns. He also vaults a concrete planter. Bucky nearly face-plants trying to get around it.

“And if we get killed on our way to the Disney store—”

There’s more to the comment, but someone grabs his elbow from behind. Steve loses his grip on Bucky’s wrist and keeps moving, and Bucky twists around ready to level the person behind him. But the person is Tony, wild-eyed and messy-haired. He looks like hell. “What happened to you?”

“I lost Barton,” he pants. He’s clinging onto a giant Toys ‘R’ Us bag. Lego set acquired, then. “Best Buy was like Vietnam. Or what I assume Vietnam was like, given that I was in diapers for most of it and—”

“This is worse than when we played paintball,” Bucky groans.

“What?” 

For a second, Bucky thinks he’s just screwing around, but then he realizes that, no, Tony actually failed to hear him over the din. He shakes his head. “I need to find Steve,” he says, extracting his arm from Tony’s grip. “You head to Best Buy. Try bird calls or something. We’ll meet at the south entrance in ten minutes.”

“Is Steve even going to be done in ten minutes?” Tony calls after him, but Bucky’s already moving.

“He better!” he yells back, but he’s pretty sure his answer’s lost in the noise.

This, he thinks as he moves through the crowd, is what the zombie apocolypse’ll be like, people shuffling through public buildings and making incoherent noises at one another as they grapple over fresh kills. Except the fresh kills right now are Kitchen Aid stand mixers at the fancy home wares store and some kind of uselessly shiny electronic at the Sharper Image. Bucky squeezes between two men, _Matrix_ -style ducks out of the way of a woman carrying a huge, gift-wrapped box, and slips into the Disney store.

“It’s a Small World” is playing.

He’d rather be in Iraq, right now.

The cash register line snakes around several displays, entirely too long for his liking, but Steve’s not there. Steve’s not at any of the _Brave_ shelves, either, which seems kind of weird. No, instead, his husband is standing by the mountain of stuffed toys, clutching an _Aristocats_ doll.

That’s it, then. This is Steve’s psychotic break: Black Friday 2012.

“Steve,” he says, and puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder.

“They’re out,” Steve says. The poor little white cat looks like she’s about to have a leg wrung out.

“Out?”

“Of the complete Merida playset.” Steve looks down at him like a hunted man. They should’ve stayed home, Bucky realizes. He should’ve tired him out with really great sex, tucked him in, and turned off the alarm.

“We’ll order it on Amazon,” Bucky says, and tugs on his arm. Steve starts to follow, then stops to put the cat back with her other stuffed brethren. “We’ll pay the extra ten bucks or whatever. Let’s just go home and _sleep_.”

“Sleep sounds good,” Steve admits, and Bucky feels like the victor.

At least, until he runs into Clint in the hallway, a lone beacon of purple t-shirt in a sea of coats and scarves. “Have you seen Stark?” he asks, and Bucky groans.

“Here we go again,” he mutters, and drags Steve along behind him.


	18. Ten Minute Warning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous requested: _“This isn’t the first time I lost track of the clock, right?” the other man asks, and Bruce clenches his jaw to keep from interrupting. “I mean, do you remember the Hansen appeal? ‘Cause I remember the Hansen appeal, I remember that I stopped eating for, what, three days, that you and Pep had to drag me out of the office and I still—” Tony gets caught up in work. Bruce drags him out. Please?_
> 
> This is a bit different than my usual fare, but I could not resist.

**From:** b.banner@suff-co.com  
 **To:** t.stark@suff-co.com  
 **Re:** Ten minute warning

And then, we are going home.

 

 **From:** t.stark@suff-co.com  
 **To:** b.banner@suff-co.com  
 **Re:** Ten minute warning

you can’t make me

 

 **From:** b.banner@suff-co.com  
 **To:** t.stark@suff-co.com  
 **Re:** Ten minute warning

You’ve worked past eight every night this week. Miles is starting to forget what you look like. Ten minutes.

 

 **From:** t.stark@suff-co.com  
 **To:** b.banner@suff-co.com  
 **Re:** Ten minute warning

speaking of miles shouldn’t you be harassing him instead of me? to have and to hold is great and all but he’s a minor and needs your parental guidance.

 

 **From:** b.banner@suff-co.com  
 **To:** t.stark@suff-co.com  
 **Re:** Ten minute warning

Miles is spending the night at Ganke’s.

 

 **From:** t.stark@suff-co.com  
 **To:** b.banner@suff-co.com  
 **Re:** Ten minute warning

on a school night? who died and turned you into the cool dad?

 

 **From:** b.banner@suff-co.com  
 **To:** t.stark@suff-co.com  
 **Re:** Ten minute warning

It’s Friday, Tony.

 

 **From:** t.stark@suff-co.com  
 **To:** b.banner@suff-co.com  
 **Re:** Ten minute warning

i knew that. i was just testing your familiarity with the gregorian calendar. important life skill. next up, mayan long count.

 

 **From:** b.banner@suff-co.com  
 **To:** t.stark@suff-co.com  
 **Re:** Ten minute warning

Six minutes.

 

 **From:** t.stark@suff-co.com  
 **To:** b.banner@suff-co.com  
 **Re:** Ten minute warning

you realize i’m creating legal precedent in here, right? i am literally changing the shape of our state laws as we know them. balancing lady justice’s scales for future generations. do you really want our son to grow up in a world where the past recollection recorded hearsay exception’s been eviscerated? _do_ you?

 

 **From:** b.banner@suff-co.com  
 **To:** t.stark@suff-co.com  
 **Re:** Ten minute warning

I’d rather live in a world where I’m not worried about our son forgetting you exist.

 

 **From:** t.stark@suff-co.com  
 **To:** b.banner@suff-co.com  
 **Re:** Ten minute warning

i’ll text him a picture.

 

 **From:** b.banner@suff-co.com  
 **To:** t.stark@suff-co.com  
 **Re:** Ten minute warning

That’s not what I meant.

 

 **From:** t.stark@suff-co.com  
 **To:** b.banner@suff-co.com  
 **Re:** Ten minute warning

there! done! you’ll be happy to know i look very dapper. he’s probably showing ganke the picture right now and saying how his dad’s a hot piece of ass and therefore should be left alone to work for at least another hour.

 

 **From:** b.banner@suff-co.com  
 **To:** t.stark@suff-co.com  
 **Re:** Ten minute warning

Two minutes.

 

 **From:** t.stark@suff-co.com  
 **To:** b.banner@suff-co.com  
 **Re:** Ten minute warning

i can’t wait to argue this before the supremes. listen, i’ll tell them, i know you were expecting a fantastic brief. i’m disappointed too. but my husband bruce – you’ve seen his name on a couple of appeals, nice guy, definitely not bossy at all – dragged me out of work before i finished. so i’m sorry about the inferior product, really i am, but that’s what happens. caveat em-marriage-por.

 

 **From:** b.banner@suff-co.com  
 **To:** t.stark@suff-co.com  
 **Re:** Ten minute warning

Fifteen seconds.

 

 **From:** t.stark@suff-co.com  
 **To:** b.banner@suff-co.com  
 **Re:** Ten minute warning

okay, did you seriously set a timer? because i can hear it going off, and that’asdfaraEW?i’;fmd

 

 **From:** n.fury@suff-co.com  
 **To:** DistAtty – All  
 **Re:** Janitorial Complaint

This morning, I received a very long e-mail from the head of the janitorial company who cleans our offices to inform me that a trail of files, paper clips, Xerox paper, and shreds from the shred bin were scattered in the area between Mr. Stark’s office, Mr. Rogers’s office, and Pepper and Jane’s cubicles. They attached pictures. It looks like a crime scene.

I’m not entirely sure what happened, but rest assured: when I find out who’s responsible, it will come out of your paycheck.

Also, there have been some complaints about the state of Mr. Stark’s desk after last night, but I believe I can get to the bottom of that without too much difficulty.

I’ve got my eye on all of you.

Sincerely,

N. Fury  
Suffolk County District Attorney


	19. Questions Worth Asking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a combination of two prompts, because it just so happened they dovetailed nicely into one another:
> 
> laylee-jones requested: _Phil agonises over asking Clint to move in with him and drives Maria insane._
> 
> anonymous requested: _Does Maria being a badass count as a prompt? Cause I would very much like to see that after Divorce Remorse._
> 
> Also, this ficlet is an absolute interlude for [Admissions, Interrogatories, and Other Discoveries](http://archiveofourown.org/works/806216/chapters/1521045). I don't know exactly what chapter it will be interluding yet (there's some pacing issues I'm fighting with, right now), but consider this a supplemental scene for that story. Is that a spoiler? Possibly. But this is officially hardcore MPU canon (whereas I consider most the other ficlets softer canon).

“You’re being a total girl about this,” Maria tells him, and kicks him under the table. She’s wearing knee-high boots, too, so it actually hurts.

It’s February, frigid and slushy outside, and Phil’s supposed to still be at work. He’d texted Clint as much—stuck finishing a motion, sorry, he’d call before he crashed—and then surreptitiously snuck out the back stairway to meet Maria for beers. Beers, and their second dish of spinach and artichoke dip, because that’s apparently dinner tonight.

“I’m not being a girl,” he complains, and she tilts her head at him. “This isn’t like asking him to dinner for the first time. This is a major step in our relationship.”

“Like inviting him to meet the family?” she asks, and he falls silent. “Or asking him to be your date to the Urban Ascent fundraiser? Phil, the man looks at you like you can literally move heaven and Earth and yet you _still_ think he’s going to dump you at the first hint of serious commitment. It’s stupid.”

She spits the word, and Phil reaches for his beer. “It’s complicated.”

“How?” Maria scoops more dip onto her plate, then crunches down on the pita chip she used as a spoon. She’s shed her suit coat, revealing the slim black dress underneath. More than once, other bar patrons’ve stopped what they’re doing to check her out. “I get that this is maybe new for you, since your type up until Clint was exclusively assholes—”

“You remember I met Mark, right?”

“—but this is how relationships work. You go places together. You meet the family. Eventually, you live in the same house, adopt some kind of fluffy creature you shove into sweaters, and have a disgustingly adorable gay wedding.” Phil purposely wrinkles his nose. Maria pauses, a new chip halfway to her mouth. “This is _just_ about moving in, right?” she asks suspiciously. “You’re not carrying around an engagement ring like something out of a bad Hugh Grant movie.”

“No ring,” Phil promises. He’s not lying, either. The thought’s crossed his mind more than once since Christmas, especially since Stark and Banner seem honestly happy in their recently-wedded bliss, but that still feels like an enormous hurdle. Cohabitation, on the other hand, is safe. Mostly. “His lease is up at the beginning of April,” he continues, Maria still scrutinizing his every facial expression. “The rent at his place isn’t bad, but it’s still a first-apartment-out-of-college situation. And he already stays with me most nights of the week.”

“Then why is this a conversation?”

“Because he could say no.”

“Phil.” Maria sets down her chip, shoves her plate away, and folds her hands on the tabletop. He thinks maybe it’s the only way she’ll stop herself from reaching over and throttling him. “I know I gave you a hard time about this originally, but Clint loves you. Actually, head-over-heels _loves_ you, and that’s not something to ig—”

“Honey,” a man says, and Phil and Maria both twist in their seats just in time to see a stranger lean on their table. He’s clearly drunk, his eyes hazy and speech slurred, and he grins at Maria like she’s a medium-rare hunk of meat. “Honey, listen, you? You are _beautiful_.”

Maria sighs. “Walk away.”

“No, listen, honey. I am just saying. You? I have waited my whole _life_ to meet a girl like you, and here you are. Fallen from heaven, or something, ‘cause—”

He’s still monologuing when Maria glances across the table, and Phil nods before picking up their beers. With smooth efficiency, Maria jerks the table six inches across the floor and away from the drunk. He stumbles without falling, mostly because Maria grabs his arm to keep him upright.

The man flinches. He’s probably not aware that Maria’s father served in the Marines and taught all three of his kids—sons and daughter alike—how to fight.

At least, he wasn’t aware until right now.

“Walk away,” Maria says again, completely calm, “or I’ll leave you with bruises that you’ll need to explain to your wife. And good luck with that, since you’re not even smart enough to lose your wedding ring before you hit on a stranger.”

The man grunts, Maria releases him, and he scampers off. She pulls the table back and accepts her beer from Phil. After it’s drained, she snags the waiter for a fresh one.

“I’m not even going to charge you,” the waiter says, and heads off to the bar.

Maria flicks her one misplaced hair back behind her ear. “My point,” she continues, “is that you can’t treat what you and Clint have like the gift horse and inspect it for every possible future defect. I think sometimes that’s what ruined my marriage: I kept searching for the cracks, and then got upset when I found them.”

Phil smiles slightly. “Also,” he reminds her, “you were married to an asshole.”

“God, I know,” Maria sighs, and accepts her free beer. “I wish time travel existed. Twenty-one-year-old Maria needs a bitch-slap and a bourbon.”

He laughs and raises his glass, and they toast to that. When the tab comes, it turns out that the bar’s comped everything except Phil’s beer, and he tosses in a big tip for that. They gather their coats and wander out into the cold twilight together.

“Ask him,” she says. Phil turns to her, their shadows stretching across the pavement under the bright parking lot light. “The worst that can happen is that he tells you he loves you but still says no. That’s it. Your relationship won’t end because he’s not ready to sleep in your bed every night.”

“And if that’s a symptom of a bigger problem?” 

“Then hopefully, you’ll talk about it.” Her smirk’s a little much, and Phil snorts a huffy almost-laugh at her. “You two have put up with more bullshit than any new couple I’ve ever met, and that’s including Bruce and Crazy. If you can’t weather this storm, then there’s no hope for the rest of us.”

She squeezes his arm, unusually fond for Maria, and then walks away, leaving Phil alone in the cold and slushy snow. He climbs into his car and fishes out his cell phone only to find a text waiting.

**Clint Barton:** _okay am i supposed to love or hate honey boo boo? i’ve watched for two hours and can’t figure it out._

Phil chuckles as he opens the reply window. _I don’t know if I should be proud or horrified that you’re watching reality TV without me._

_come over and it won’t have to be without you anymore._

He wets his lips, considering his reply, but then a car horn blasts nearby. When he glances up, Maria’s parked perpendicular to his car, her eyes narrowed. She mimics calling someone on the phone, he rolls his eyes at her, and then, she drives off.

In his hands, his phone screen starts to dim.

_I’ll be there in ten minutes_ , he types back, his fingers feeling oddly unfamiliar. _I have something I want to ask you._


	20. Being Twenty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> uberniftacular requested: _Also my first prompt from yesterday left me still really curious about Dot's first girlfriend._

Her name is Lisa, she’s a graduate student in linguistics, and kissing her is amazing.

Dot’s kissed girls before, of course. Well. Girl. Amy. She and Amy’d made out the one time, which’d been hugely weird and ended when Miles caught them in the act. He’d been pretty cool about it, but he’d _definitely_ looked at Dot differently for weeks afterward.

Like he’d never seen two girls kiss before. Dot’s borrowed his computer. She _knows_.

Lisa’s gorgeous and funny, with long honey-blonde hair and perpetually tan skin, and she slides her hands down Dot’s sides like she’s appreciating fine art. Dot’d only realized how much she liked those hands at the Kappa Phi party a month ago, when Lisa—graceful while also delightfully drunk, her laughter like the wind chimes on the deck at her uncles’ house—kept dancing with her.

Dot’d drunk a bunch that night, too. Probably why they ended up in Lisa’s little graduate student office in the humanities building, instead of—

“Oh,” Dot squeaks when Lisa scrapes teeth over her collarbone, and Lisa grins. She pushes at Lisa’s shoulder a little, but she’s hard to deter. The teeth return, Dot’s next noise is _not_ a squeak, and—

Oh, she will murder Tim for changing her ringtone to the _Power Rangers_ theme song. “Hang on,” she says, and Lisa sighs against her skin as she stretches to snag her phone off her desk. 

Snag her phone, and then groan. Not a sexy groan, either.

“What?” Lisa asks.

“Dads,” Dot replies, and accepts the call. “Hey,” she greets, because she assumes it’s the same as every other Sunday morning: her dads, calling on speaker phone after church, completely and disgustingly wholesome.

Except she’s wrong.

“Hey, kid,” Bucky says, alone, his voice too clear to be on speaker. Dot sits straight up in bed, nearly knocking Lisa off the narrow cot. She hates the fact that she’s stuck in the dorm for another year, but she’s behind on credits and technically still a sophomore. “We’re waiting outside. You coming down?”

“Waiting?” Dot repeats. She gropes around for her day planner, the only calendar she trusts, and finds it upside down on top of a pile of her roommate’s dirty laundry. She tries not to scowl at it. “For what?”

“Uh, your uncle’s birthday.” Her dad sounds confused, which is probably the right reaction. As it stands, Dot feels all the color drain out of her face. She half-rolls, half-tumbles out of bed, leaving a barely-dressed—actually, no, make that _not_ dressed—Lisa sitting among all the rumpled covers. She switches her phone to speaker, mutes it on her side, and lets her dad keep talking. 

“—have a lot on your plate, that’s okay,” he’s saying, but it’s _Steve_ now. Disappointing Steve is still, to this day, a thousand times worse than disappointing Bucky. She grabs a skirt off her pile of clean laundry, realizes how short it is, and throws it toward the bed. Lisa catches it and decides she’ll wear it, instead. Huh. Maybe it is Lisa’s.

Her dad’s still talking. “But they love you, and it’s important to them. Especially Tony, who purposely planned the party for _today_ to make sure you can come, and—”

“I know,” she says breathlessly, unmuting the phone. She’s in jeans now, plus a bra and a t-shirt, and she’s almost acceptable. Well, except for the fact her hair looks like a rat’s nest. She runs fingers through it, which only makes it worse. “I, uh, I had a friend over to study last night—” Lisa cocks her head at that. “—and slept in. I’ll be down in, like, three minutes. Okay?”

“If you need more time,” her dad starts to say, “I can send Miles and—”

“Three minutes,” she interrupts, and hangs up on him.

She will not discuss how she spends those three minutes, however. That’s private.

When she emerges from the dorm, her hair even more messed up than in the mirror, Steve’s standing outside the car and waiting for her. He’s wearing a smile almost like he’s forgotten what she looks like after three weeks apart. He opens his arms, she falls into a hug, and it’s normal.

She loves her parents, honestly. Being twenty and trying to figure your life out, though, that’s hard.

“It’s good to see you,” her dad says, totally sincere. He draws back, probably to check her for broken bones or missing pieces, and then frowns. His eyes narrow in on her neck, and she feels her entire face flush red.

From just across the drive outside the dorm, Lisa winks.

“You, uh,” he attempts, and then forces a little smile. It’s a nervous, uncomfortable smile, like the time he found condoms in her backpack. Not _her_ condoms, either, but ones she’d bought for an idiot friend too embarrassed to do it himself.

She tries to smile back, but this is her _dad_.

“Natasha might have some concealer,” he finally says, and squeezes her one more time before opening the car door for her.

It’s a very quiet drive to Bruce and Tony’s, after that.


	21. Adults, Attorneys, and Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sarahnoh requested: _Maria and Phil bickering_
> 
> This is technically more than a bicker, but I think it all works out in the end.

“I can’t believe you filed that without clearing it with me first!” Phil shouts, and slams the case file down on his desk. He’s in full-out pissy-pacing mode, which is probably Maria’s least favorite. Worse, he’s starting to raise his voice. “That was my motion, I started it—”

“And then you were out for three days with the flu,” Maria reminds him for the sixth time since they rode the elevator up from the second floor, silently seething at one another. The entire motions hearing’d turned into a shit show five minutes in, Laufeyson picking apart their legal and factual arguments, and Judge Hammersmith’d thrown out three pieces of important evidence. Maria knows in her bones they’ll be cornered into a plea deal, now, and she hates pleading out manslaughter cases.

She’d rather watch the fucker burn.

Right now, though, she’d rather watch _Phil_ burn, because he rolls his eyes at her. “I didn’t know the flu stripped me of my authority in this office,” he snipes.

“I didn’t know you had _authority_ over me,” she spits right back. He huffs something that’s close to a laugh, and she plants her hands on his desk. “That nameplate outside my door says Chief Assistant District Attorney, same as yours. Same rank, same title, same responsibilities. You were sick, I made a judgment call—”

“And look how well that turned out,” he cuts in.

“—and it didn’t work out.” He turns his back to her, stalking away from his desk, and she really wants to pick up the file folder and fling it at him. “I didn’t change any of your arguments,” she reminds him tightly, and he scoffs aloud. “I fixed a comma splice and I finished the section on _Miranda_. That’s it. So unless you have a problem with my fixing your typographical errors, I don’t—”

“I have a problem with you not consulting me,” Phil snaps back. He twists around to point a finger at her like a nagging schoolmarm. She wants to snap it off and throw it at him. Who the fuck does he think he is, anyway? “I wasn’t dead, I wasn’t in Timbuktu, and I certainly wasn’t so sick that I couldn’t’ve at least read it over once. But instead, you made a unilateral decision—”

“To be a decent human being while you were out of the office, Phil!”

“—and now the trial’s compromised because you can’t—”

She throws up her hands. “Stop making me out to be the bad guy, here! It’s not my fault—”

“—plead out a _bastard_ like Monroe because—”

“—leave your fucking ego at the door for ten seconds—”

“—can’t be bothered to—”

“What the _fuck_ is going on in here?”

Nick Fury’s voice echoes through Phil’s office _and_ down the hall, and Maria freezes like she’s just been doused in ice water. Across the desk, Phil stands there, mouth hanging open and finger still extended. When he straightens his spine, Maria almost unconsciously mirrors the motion; when he drops his hand, she, very slowly, turns around.

Nick looms in the doorway, larger than life in his black suit, and pins them in place with a stare. “I have never in all my years in this office seen a fucking motions hearing turn two of the sharpest lawyers I know into bickering _school kids_ ,” he spits. Every word’s acidic, razor sharp and vitriolic, and Maria swallows to avoid dropping her eyes to the floor. She’d only been dressed down once in her professional life so far, but she knows without question this is the second. “Nobody fucking cares who filed the motion with whose arguments and why the whole thing turned into a bucket of horseshit. What they care about—what _I_ care about—is how you fix this thing so we’re not forced to let a murderer off with a smile and a song.”

Maria flexes her hands into fists at her sides. Behind her, Phil says, “A few of the decisions were close calls. I could probably file a motion to reconsider.”

Nick lifts an eyebrow. “Probably?”

“Definitely,” Maria tacks on. When she glances over her shoulder, Phil’s watching her carefully. “His oral decisions are always full of hemming and hawing. He hedges his bets. The worst that can happen is he rejects the motion and we appeal.”

“The case’s been stalled for months thanks to Laufeyson and his constant stream of motions,” Phil offers. Maria nods immediately. They’ve spent how many hours stealing booze out of Stark’s not-so-secret stash and bitching about how much paper the asshole files? She’s not sure, but the number’s a high one. “He waived speedy trial. We’ve got time.”

“Good.” Nick nods exactly once, then turns to leave the office. Maria feels the tension in her shoulders start to seep away, but when he twists around to face them again, it jumps right back into her muscles. “You two are adults,” he says tightly, “and you’re attorneys, but more than that? You’re friends. Act like it.”

“Yes, sir,” they say in unison. Maria thinks, just for a second, that Nick’s mouth tips up into a smile before he disappears down the hall.

The office falls silent after that, the two of them standing there as the raw terror of a face-to-face lecture from Nick finally starts to subside. Once she can breathe again, Maria turns around to find Phil with his in his pockets. “Do I need to apologize for taking initiative?” she asks.

The corner of his mouth twitches. “Depends on whether I need to apologize for wanting to stay in the loop.”

“No.”

“Then it’s no for me, too,” Phil says. He pulls out his desk chair and nods toward the folder. “We’ve got a motion to write, counselor.”

“Yes, sir,” she replies, and only gives into her smile after he smiles first.


	22. The Art of Worrying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> psalmoflife requested: _Bucky's first day in the office/working with Steve_
> 
> (There were actually more requests, but this is the one that spoke to me. I do not know why. Maybe because I love these idiots.)

“I don’t need a guided tour,” Bucky says. Again. For the third time.

Bucky loves his husband. He took a vow almost ten years ago, he meant every word of it, and none of that will ever change. But Steve can be— Well, he can be _Steve_ , that really sums it up nicely.

“It’s not a guided tour,” Steve replies, also for the third time, and holds the elevator door so Bucky can step out. They’re on the fourth floor, which mainly belongs to the county commissioner and other public offices that are totally irrelevant to the District Attorney, and he _knows_ it. Worse _Steve_ knows what he’s doing, all nervous and earnest, and Bucky considers grabbing him by the tie and shaking him. “I just want you to be familiar with all the relevant places in the building.”

“You mean the building I’ve worked in for the last year?” Bucky retorts.

“You didn’t work _in_ the building. You appeared in court and occasionally filed motions. That’s different.” Steve turns to gesture to the floor directory. “Now, here, we have the county commissioner’s office, which mostly handles administrative functions. There’s the records office for real property, the tax assessor’s office, the—”

“Steve,” Bucky interrupts. When Steve keeps reading the list aloud, he reaches over and grips his husband’s arm. It’s harder than he means to, sort of jerking Steve to a stop, but at least it ends the babbling. He looks surprised, but Bucky just sighs. “I know what you’re doing, okay?”

Steve glances away. It’s his best-honed nervous tic. “I’m not doing anything.”

“Yeah, you are.” Bucky loosens his grip on Steve’s arm, but he doesn’t let go. “Remember the week before I started law school and your ‘guided tour’ of the library?” He watches the tips of Steve’s ears turn red. “And when I was interviewing for that internship at a firm and you came home with a thirty-page packet of information about the place, because you’d had Tony call his buddy and get me all the information to wow the interviewers?”

“Tony offered,” Steve mutters.

“Tony didn’t know I was interviewing there until after you told him,” Bucky returns. Steve lifts his incredible shoulders in a tiny shrug. “Steve, I love you, but I’ve got this.”

“I—”

“No, no ‘I have incredibly good intentions and just want you to be happy,’ not today,” Bucky cuts in. When Steve raises a hand to rub the back of his neck, Bucky catches it. He squeezes his fingers, soft and warm. “I convinced Nick Fury to trust me enough to hire me. I think I can figure out where the grantee index for land deeds is, if I need it. Which I _never_ will.” Steve smiles a little and ducks his head to the floor. “Stop worrying.”

“I’ve kind of developed worrying into an art form,” Steve reminds him.

“Yeah, and it’s cute and everything, but trust me on this.” He looks a little uncertain about the whole prospect, so Bucky shoves him in the shoulder. That coaxes out a sparkling Steve smile. “Have I ever disappointed you?”

“Do I have time to make a list?” Steve wonders, and when Bucky reaches to shove him again, Steve catches him and kisses him.

Which is probably why the scuttlebutt around the judicial complex for three days is about how the new assistant district attorney got caught sort of half making out with his husband in the elevator, but whatever.

Better that than being the guy who couldn’t find the county tax assessor’s office, right?


	23. The First Five Times Thor Asked Jane Foster to Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tora42 requested: _How about something about the early stages of Jane and Thor's relationship?_
> 
> This might be one of my favorites.

The first time he asks Jane Foster to dinner, it is a Tuesday. She is wearing a blue button-down blouse with black pants, and she has worked at the District Attorney’s office for three weeks.

He sets a file he’s finished annotating in a bin on her desk. For a moment, he stands and watches her work, delicate fingers clattering on the keyboard, before he asks, “Would you care to have dinner with me?”

She glances up. He thinks for a moment she is surprised, but her expression quickly hardens. “No, thank you,” she says tightly, and returns to typing.

 

The second time he asks Jane Foster to dinner, it is a Friday. Her car, an ancient Ford Focus with chipped paint and mismatched tires, will not start, and she’s waiting for Darcy to pick her up. She’s wearing a windbreaker with the hood pulled up over her head to fight against the drizzle. She has worked at the District Attorney’s office for a month and a half.

Thor pauses with his motorcycle helmet between his hands. “Will Darcy be here soon?” he calls, and she twists around. They stare at one another for a moment.

Finally, though, Jane shrugs. “She said it’d be half an hour.”

“Would you like to go across the street with me while you wait?”

Jane glances through the park and across the street to the sandwich shop they frequently order work lunches from. She seems to consider the offer, but then shakes her head. “No, but thanks,” she says, and he thinks perhaps it’s genuine.

 

The third time he asks Jane Foster to dinner, it is a Monday. He leaves in two days to visit his family for Thanksgiving, a holiday that he both enjoys and dreads. The office buzzes with others’ holiday plans—Stark, for instance, is hosting a dinner for anyone whose family is too far to visit, Coulson will see his sister in Chicago, and Darcy is already telling stories of Thanksgivings past—but Jane remains quiet. She’s bundled in a sweater, with a fleece blanket on her lap and a space heater under her desk. He thinks she likes being warm.

“Any plans for the holiday?” he asks, setting a file in the tray. She has worked at the District Attorney’s office for three months, now.

She shakes her head slightly. “I’m going to spend break at the university, trying to get work done,” she says, pulling a few pages off her printer. She hands them over, along with a pen. “I’m weeks behind on my research.”

He pauses in signing to look at her. “No time with your family?”

Her smile softens her whole face, sweet but somehow also sad. “Not much of a family to visit,” she admits, and accepts the sheets back after he’s scratched his signature across them.

She’s notarizing the third of three when he, without thinking, says, “Have dinner with me tonight.”

Jane smears the rubber stamp, blurring her name and the notary seal. When she looks up, the sweet sadness lingers. “I’m sorry, but no,” she replies, and signs her own name to the document.

 

The fourth time he asks Jane Foster to dinner, it is a Saturday. They are dancing at a Christmas fundraiser for Stark’s charity, shoved together out of utility after Stark declared they all “get their sorry asses on the dance floor.” Stark himself is dancing with Miss Potts, laughing warmly, while Miss Romanoff glides along the floor with Banner, and it all feels quite comfortable.

Jane is silent, stepping gracefully with him, her long, dark dress sweeping the floor. She does not wear skirts to work, as far as he’s aware—her clothes are utilitarian, easy to move in—but he cannot decide why. Because in the dress and heeled shoes, her hair back and wearing a necklace borrowed from a bag of costume jewelry Darcy brought along, she is breathtaking.

He spreads his fingers on her hip and she slides closer to him, their bodies nearly touching. He knows it is likely instinct or muscle memory, but somehow, it bolsters his bravery.

“Jane,” he says quietly, and she tips her head up. “Would you have dinner with me?”

She presses her lips into a thin line, but a smile touches the corners of her mouth. “We’ve already eaten,” she reminds him, and the song ends immediately after.

 

The fifth time he asks Jane Foster to dinner, it is January 4, and the office is open for the first time after the start of the New Year. He spends hours poring over new case files before emerging from his office.

Jane is wearing a blue-checked shirt, and her usual blanket is spread over her lap. She looks up from her computer and smiles at him, warm and friendly. “Happy New Year,” she greets.

“Happy New Year,” he replies. He sets down the files in her tray. They look at each other for a few seconds too long. Jane draws in a breath he thinks she holds; he exhales slowly. 

“Please have dinner with me,” he says.

Jane tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Okay,” she replies, and he smiles.


	24. Dog Day Afternoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I had several requests about the pets, including:
> 
> dulcemeow: _Or something about Bruce learning to live with the pets._
> 
> uberniftcular: _And can we get something Jarvis-and-the-dogs-centric? Because that would be awesome._
> 
> anonymous: _does any one in Motion Practice have pets?_
> 
> And a prompt from KayQy I no longer have because I filled the other one. So, needless to say, this happened.

“It’s four a.m.,” Bruce groans, and covers his head with the pillow.

Dummy licks his foot.

Tony’s at the capital for oral argument this week, leaving Bruce to fend alone against a teenager, a cat, and two dogs. The foremost of the four is undoubtedly after not one but _three_ reminders to put the book away last night, but the other three are all in bed with Bruce. A bed that, by the way, they never dare to enter when Tony’s home, because they respect him.

How is it that Bruce is the serious dad with their child but the fun dad with the pets?

Butterfingers stands up on the mattress for the fifth time in as many minutes, awkward like a newborn calf, and snuffles his way to the head of the bed. Jarvis spent the night on Tony’s empty pillow, and Bruce discovers he’s still there when Butterfingers tries to lick soft cat-belly. Because Jarvis growls and hisses, runs over Bruce to escape the bedroom, and both dogs give chase.

At four a.m.

Bruce texts Tony with _I hate our pets_ before dragging himself downstairs to let the dogs out. He ends up falling asleep on the couch with the dogs still outside, because it’s four in the morning and he’s exhausted. 

The college student who walks the dogs at lunch texts Bruce in the middle of a hearing to say he’s sick and won’t make it, so Bruce spends his lunch break driving back to the house, letting the dogs out, and then encouraging them to do their business instead of dance around him in surprised delight. At one point, Butterfingers misjudges the steps and barrels into Bruce, almost knocking him over and getting mud all over his pants. Which also means, by the way, that he spends an extra five minutes crouched inside the back door, wiping down muddy paws while Dummy whines about it.

He won’t divulge how many treats are required to con the dogs back into their crates. It’s a shameful number, and he’s not proud of it.

He changes, returns to work, and makes it through the rest of the day unscathed. He’s only five minutes late to pick Miles up—impressive, given that his last hearing ran twenty minutes over—and they swing by the grocery store to pick up a few things that are missing from the fridge. It never even occurs to Bruce that he might’ve failed to latch the crates all the way until he opens the door between the garage and the rest of the house just in time for Butterfingers to chase Jarvis _out_ it.

“You have got to be _kidding_!” he announces to no one in particular, while Miles—who usually denies even tolerating the cat—drops everything to try to coax him out from under the car.

The house isn’t trashed, necessarily, but it’s certainly not pretty, either. Two stuffed dog toys’ve been shredded completely, stuffing spread everywhere, and the novel Tony left on the coffee table is now confetti. Upstairs, they’ve dragged all the sheets off his and Tony’s bed, creating some kind of horrible dog nest on the floor instead of on the mattress, and clearly someone’s slept in Miles’s unmade bed, as well. There’s also a chewed-up tube of toothpaste, which ends in an awkward call to the vet to make sure that toothpaste won’t, in small doses, kill a greyhound.

Bruce grudgingly lets Miles order a pizza, locks the dogs out in the yard, and spends what feels like a very long time vacuuming, scrubbing, and otherwise cleaning. Jarvis slinks back in from the garage with a stripe of _something_ in his white fur, requiring a very uncomfortable ten minutes of trying to wipe down the cat.

By the end of the process, Bruce is seriously considering Googling animal shelters and giving the three of them away as some sort of horrendous group package. But then, Miles lets the dogs in, and they’re calm and happy, so he sighs and scratches them behind the ears before finishing his pizza.

Miles is in the shower when Tony makes it home, dumping everything inside the door and whistling loudly for the dogs. There’s jumping, capering, and little barks of delight. Jarvis, sleeping on the couch cushion next to Bruce, raises his eyebrows without opening his eyes.

“Agreed,” Bruce says, and strokes over the middle of his fuzzy forehead.

“And then, there’s my _favorite_ boy, the one singing Ke$ha in the shower excluded,” Tony continues, part of his long line of babbling to the dogs. Bruce tips his head up as Tony leans down over the back of the couch, and ends up with a kiss to the eyebrow instead of the top of his head. He chuckles when Tony pulls a face. “That shit’s so much more romantic and adorable in bad Nick Sparks movies than in reality.”

“But you try it anyway,” Bruce points out, closing the book in his lap.

“Uh, of course I try it. Have to keep romance alive. Otherwise, I’ll start drowning my sorrows in golf and Hooters hot wings, and then where’ll we be?” He leans over again, this time finding hair to press his face against, and Bruce snorts an almost-laugh. “Things go okay? Miss me? Buy a creepy body pillow online for all your cuddling needs? Dogs try to get in the bed since I wasn’t there?”

Bruce closes his eyes for a few seconds and considers telling Tony the truth: that yes, the dogs climbed into the bed, but also that they were horribly behaved and he feels like he’s spent more time wrangling the pets than working, today. But then, Tony nuzzles against his hair and he decides it’s really not worth it.

“I’m glad you’re home,” he says instead, and lets Tony grin about it without any further explanation.


	25. The Pseudo-Scientist and the Former Engineer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> iamironmanda requested: _can I get some Bruce/Tony and science? Just them geeking out together and being adorable._

“Plausible,” Tony predicts, and Bruce sighs.

“You’re a former engineer,” he points out, reaching to pluck a handful of popcorn kernels out of the bowl on the coffee table. Butterfingers is lying upside down in the space between the couch and the table, his nose in the air like he might catch a loose piece of popcorn if he just focuses hard enough. So far, he’s been unsuccessful.

“Right.” Tony steals a piece of popcorn right out of Bruce’s hand, then tosses it into his mouth. “I’m a former engineer, and that means my totally amazing engineering brain can accurately predict that, with the right mechanisms, they can bend a bullet’s trajectory.”

“Physics disagrees.”

“Physics is a pseudo-science, dreamt up by bored math majors who got sick of doing calculus.” He reaches for Bruce’s stash of popcorn again and Bruce purposely twists to avoid him. The sad puppy dog look that’s never cute—not at Target, not at the office, and not in bed—only annoys him this time. “What? I cut too close to the bone?”

“You just called my field of expertise a pseudo-science,” Bruce returns. Tony snorts and reaches for his soda. “That’s sleep-on-the-couch material most places.”

“Okay, one,” Tony replies, holding up a finger, “your field of expertise isn’t physics, it’s child welfare law. A field that I don’t entirely understand but absolutely and totally respect, a field that let us obtain the kid who’s sulking upstairs—” 

“I heard that!” Miles yells down.

“Wasn’t keeping it a secret!” Tony yells back. Bruce leans his head against the back of the couch. Sometimes, he wonders if revoking Miles’s cell phone and computer privileges are worth it. Tony swigs his drink. “So, yeah, that’s one. And two, the only household that’s probably a rule in is Thor’s house, and, I mean, he probably deserves it. Every time.”

On the TV, Adam and Jamie are rambling about fighter jets, but Bruce shifts on the couch to stare at Tony. “There’s no lateral forces applied to a bullet once it’s in flight,” he says. Tony rolls his eyes, so Bruce raises his foot and nudges him in the ankle. It’s a poor man’s kick, and it just means that Tony tosses his leg over Bruce’s and lets it settle there. “And you can’t create lateral forces by flicking your wrist. That’s why it’s a myth.”

“Bet you can,” Tony returns. There’s a glimmer in his eyes, a sure since he’s trying to needle his way under Bruce’s skin.

Bruce’d usually ignore it, but he’s had a long day at work, and their teenager is being particularly vindictive about his punishment. He raises his eyebrows. “How much?”

“What?”

“You want to bet, then name your price.” Bruce reaches over and helps himself to more popcorn. “Electronics, a new watch, physical labor—”

“Who are you,” Tony demands, “and what have you done with my husband?”

“—housework, they’re all acceptable wagers.” The show switches back to Tory, Kari, and Grant, so Bruce reaches over and pauses the video. Tony’s peering at him suspiciously. “Well?”

“You can bend a bullet,” Tony insists. 

“And yet, you’re not convinced enough to bet on it,” Bruce replies, and helps himself to Tony’s soda.

The bet on the curving bullet, by the way, is three weeks of laundry. Bruce also wins a cell phone upgrade, a new watch, and a week of Tony driving the Prius (his favorite) before losing the laundry and the cell phone both on some of the duct tape challenges.

All in all, then, a good night.


	26. Commodities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous requested: _So I'm sure you have a metric ton of prompts, but if it tickles your fancy, maybe some Natasha and Pepper? Like the first time they realize their relationship is For Keeps, or Pepper worrying about Natasha in a potentially volatile work situation...or anything really!_
> 
> And then, another anonymous requested: _prompt: Natasha/Pepper, Tony and Natasha both get possessive of Pepper's time_
> 
> "Shepardizing" is a process of checking the validity of court cases to make sure they've not been overturned. It's an annoying process, and I guarantee you Tony hates doing it.

“You do understand that there’s an appeal due in _tomorrow_ , right?” Tony asks, tossing his cell phone down on his desk. He’s spent the day on and off the phone, arguing loudly with Obadiah Stane about shareholder meetings and director vacancies. The rest of the time, he’s barked orders at everyone who’s come near him: Pepper, Bruce, and now, Natasha.

Natasha, who crosses her arms and peers at him across his office.

Natasha, who asked him for one small favor and is now getting the full Tony Stark treatment.

“I know the most you write are replies to motions in limine that really don’t matter in the long run,” he says, and she scowls at him, “but appeals are a process. They involve double- and triple-checks, they involve finesse, they involve—”

“Time management?” she breaks in. Tony snaps his mouth shut and tips his head at her. She mimics him, a classic technique to encourage compromise, and watches him frown. “Because as I understand it, you’ve had this appeal pending for three months and are only cutting it close to annoy Heimdall.”

He stares at her, unblinking, before he asks, “Pepper or Bruce?”

She shrugs. “Or neither.”

“See, no. It’s either Pepper, or it’s Bruce. One of them can no longer be trusted and must be excised from my secrets like a tumor.” He pauses, thinks through the simile, and then shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter, you can’t have her.”

Natasha resists the urge to huff a breath. “We’ve had reservations for three weeks, Tony.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I e-mailed you a month ago, asking what the appellate calendar looked like, because—”

“And, again, doesn’t matter.” He points a finger in Natasha’s direction, and she grits her teeth. Why men always think they can point at women, she doesn’t know. “I know you think dinners are important and that cuddly girlfriend togetherness time is kind of the best thing ever, and I’d agree except for the part where this appeal matters. It matters, it needs to be done, and your reservations—” He wags the finger, and she narrows her eyes at him. She wants to cut his finger off at the first knuckle. “You know what? I’ll call a guy and get you reservations some other time, I’ll even pay for your dinner, but I need you to—”

“This isn’t about the reservations,” Natasha interrupts. She hears the tightness in her voice, the razor-sharp anger that she’s barely swallowing down; Tony apparently doesn’t, because he rolls his eyes. “Tony, I _asked_ you, and you said—”

“Yeah, well, I’m revoking my permission,” he retorts. She tries not to gape at him, at the word _permission_ as applied to Pepper, but she fails. “No dinner. Pepper stays with me tonight.”

“She’s not your _possession_ , in case you—”

“She’s not yours, either, and given that your time is at most as valuable as mine, I’d think you—”

“What is the matter with you two?”

Pepper punctuates the question by slamming a thick court transcript down on Tony’s desk, and Natasha flinches. Worse, Tony jumps, his eyes immediately blossoming to the size of small planets, but Pepper simply stares at both of them. “You’re arguing about my time like I’m, what, something available for exchange on the commodities market? An appeal for a dinner, your time—” She gestures angrily at Natasha, who presses her lips together. “—for _his_?” She shakes her head. “I’m going home.”

“We’ve got at least three hours left before we’re even close to finished,” Tony says immediately. Natasha sends him a dirty look, but nothing compares to the anger that radiates on Pepper’s face when she turns toward him.

“Then I hope your husband knows how to Shepardize,” she snipes, “because otherwise, you’re on your own.”

She retreats immediately out of his office after that, grabbing her purse from her cubicle and continuing right on down the hall. They both watch her go, silently, before Tony says, “Your fault.”

Natasha slugs him on the arm before she, too, walks away.

It’s after nine when she knocks on Pepper’s apartment door in jeans and a t-shirt, holding a bottle of wine and feeling generally disappointed in herself. She’d tried to work out her frustration at the gym, then by running a half-dozen errands, but she’d heard Pepper’s voice in the back of her head the entire time.

It’s why her last stop was the liquor store, for a bottle of pretty expensive red that had the cashier raising his eyebrows.

Pepper answers the door in yoga pants and a tank-top, unsmiling. Natasha raises the bottle, but her eyes are immediately drawn to an enormous flower arrangement sitting on the sofa table. It’s at least six kinds of flowers, all of them different sizes and colors, and there’s a bow around the vase.

“Tony is, apparently, very sorry,” Pepper says, following her eyes. There’s amusement in her tone that’s not written on her face.

“He’s not alone in that,” Natasha replies. Pepper considers her for a moment, messy-haired and in slouchy, errand-running clothes, but then steps aside to let her in. They stand in the open doorway for a few seconds, Pepper with her hand on the knob. Natasha knows she’s waiting, so she draws in a breath. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“Forty-plus dollars worth of sorry, from the looks of it.” Pepper peels the bottle out of her grip and, for lack of a better place to put it, sets it on the floor next to the closet. Empty-handed, Natasha reaches forward to find her hips, and Pepper finally—graciously—releases the doorknob.

“I’m still mad,” Pepper informs her. “We had actual anniversary plans, and you two turned it into—”

“And I’m going to make it up to you,” Natasha promises, and kicks the door the rest of the way shut while she kisses her.


	27. Sandwich Cat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous requested: _So, prompt, maybe, if you can: Phil and Clint adopting a cat in lieu of a child (at least for the time being)_
> 
> This, too, is now hard canon.

“No,” Phil says.

The kitten mews.

The kitten’s this tiny, straggly thing, half-drowned from the torrential spring rainfall outside, and she huddles against Clint’s shirt. The wet patch’s pretty big and growing, but the thing’d freaked out when Clint tried to rub it down with paper towels, so he’d given up and just held on. She’s pretty, though, all mottled-gray and big-eyed, and she looks totally pathetic when she mews.

Which she does again, louder than before. Phil takes off his glasses. “We’re not home enough for a cat.”

“I thought of that too and tried to give it to Bruce—figured Miles might like her or something—and Bruce says cats are easy.” The kitten tries to climb up his shirt, so he grabs her and brings her over to Phil’s desk. She huddles on the edge, shaking, and Clint strokes her in case it’s cold instead of fear. “I looked all over outside, and there’s no sign of a mama cat or any other kittens. It’s _just_ her.” Phil sighs, and the noise jostles the kitten enough that she twists to look at him. Clint thinks for a second she’ll bolt, but she’s curious instead, tipping her head up. “I can’t just dump her back out there.”

“No, but we can call an animal shelter, and they can—”

“Both the no-kills are full and animal control said it’s a three-day turnaround before they— Y’know.” Clint’d tried not to hang up on the receptionist, too, but listening to her complain about “kitten season” like it was some kinda curse’d pissed him off. He’d grown up with _The Price is Right_ and knew all about spaying and neutering pets, but this was a kitten, not the bubonic plague. He looks over at Phil, who’s frowning. “She’s alone.”

Phil rolls his lips into a tight line and looks at the little girl cat. She’s slinking forward, curious about the huge stretch of desk in front of her, and Clint all of a sudden realizes why: Phil’s half-eaten Subway sandwich’s sitting there, full of cheese and mayo and everything else a tiny, hungry kitten’d love to snack on. Phil doesn’t notice her trajectory, though, and extends two fingers for her to sniff. “I’m not a cat person.”

“You think I am? My whole life I wanted a dog, not a scrawny gray kitten I found in a parking lot.” Phil raises his eyes, and Clint shrugs. “But I’m not gonna ditch her and give up on her.”

Phil’s face softens just then, and turns even softer when the kitten head-butts his fingers before continuing her way across the desk. She’s less shaky now, almost brave about it, and Clint can’t help but smile. He thinks Phil catches his smile, too, because the lines around Phil’s eyes bunch. When he sighs, it sounds like defeat. “She’s your responsibility,” he says, and Clint grins. “Ruined drapes, cat-prints on the counters, torn up carpets, it’s all on you. Because if we have to have a cat, I don’t—”

Clint assumes there’s more to Phil’s warnings, but they’re cut off by the unmistakable sound of Phil’s sandwich paper crinkling. When they glance over, the kitten’s standing in the middle of the paper, licking mayo off a piece of ham. She freezes when they stare at her, waiting for someone to yell; when they don’t do anything, she returns to the licking.

Phil’s jaw works, tightening reflexively, and Clint stands up in a flash. “C’mere, Sandwich Cat,” he says, and steals her off Phil’s desk. He can feel Phil glaring a hole in the back of his head as he retreats, but he knows the kitten’s definitely theirs, now. 

And the name Sandwich Cat totally sticks, by the way.


	28. Broad-Shouldered Men

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another combination prompt!
> 
> anonymous requested: _ask #1: oddly enough, i'd kinda like to see some bobby/hank. maybe a legal aid work get-together where they're being ridiculous off in a corner and everyone else is making fun of them? bonus points for emma shocking everyone by showing some kind of positive emotion_
> 
> And a second anonymous requested: _Prompt: Aaaaanything about Carol._
> 
> This, too, is hard canon, but takes place before Admissions, Interrogatories, and Other Discoveries. It is the holiday season during Permanency, in other words.

“Oh, that is _disgusting_ ,” Carol declares, and bites down really hard on a canapé.

Seriously. It’s vindictive biting, the kind that crunches loud and leaves you wondering whether the hors d'oeuvre she picked up actually contains something crunchy, or if the crunch is created by the sheer force of her bitter loathing. Wade’s only eaten the bacon-wrapped water chestnuts and the shrimp puffs, so far. He’s not a good judge of relative snack-crunch.

They’re at the annual Christmas party that’s co-hosted by a bunch of local legal aid organizations, because let’s face it, there’s not enough cash in the budget for their office to have their own classy dinner with bacon-wrapped appetizers and free booze. There’s not enough cash in the budget for a holiday trip to the arcade. Wade _checked_ , okay?

So instead of just the five of them (and Carol’s evil part-timer), there’s also the folks from the law school’s legal aid clinic, the social justice mongers from the wrongful convictions center, all the appellate defenders from that office, and the list carries on. Wade only recognizes a third of them, so he’s started to label them based on their clothes; for example, Trying Too Hard in Those Heels keeps attempting to con Ugly But Expensive Suit into dancing with her, but he’s completely not buying it.

Wade’s thought about hitting on This Is a Family Event; How Is Your Dress Backless? a couple times, but man, it feels too much like effort.

And, besides, Carol’s still ranting about something and pointing at the corner by the fancy windows, so he should probably pay attention to— Oh.

To Bobby Drake and his adorable, broad-shouldered, doctor husband.

Great.

“Look at them,” Carol complains, snagging a glass of free wine off a tray as the waiter passes. Wade skips the wine but steals six shrimp puffs—you know, could be crab, the spider of the sea—off the next tray. The waiter sends him a nasty look, so he picks up a seventh and pops it right into his mouth. “All young and handsome and ridiculously in love.” She swigs her wine. “If I didn’t like this dress so much, I might throw up.”

“Please tell me they’re just talking really close to each other’s mouths and not kissing in public,” Wade says. Not because he’s adverse to them kissing in public, but because, well. Let’s just say, last week, a dream started out kind of like that, only he was wearing a banana hammock of a swimsuit instead of his actual clothes, and—

“Of _course_ they’re kissing,” Carol scoffs. “They’re stupidly, maddeningly, and adorably in love.”

“Can I puke instead?”

“You keep eating those crab things, you will.” She reaches over, grabs two of the puffs, and tosses one in her mouth. Wade swears that, across the hall that they all rented, Bobby’s nuzzling Hank’s cheek or something equally horrible. Horrible because of the cute sweetness, not because it’s Bobby and Hank.

Well, maybe a little.

No one hot lawyer should be allowed to marry a hot doctor. That’s like peeing in the public pool: you ruin it for everybody else.

“I don’t know why you’re complaining with me,” Carol says suddenly, and Wade stops chewing his last seafood puff (he’s still not convinced it’s crab) to stare at her. “Bobby’s not the only one with a broad-shouldered hottie who wants all up in his business.”

Wade has no idea what she’s talking about, so he says, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

She rolls her eyes. “Seriously?” she demands. When he nods, she drains the rest of her wine, sets the glass on a nearby table, and flags down another waiter for another glass. Wade suddenly regrets not joining the armed forces; he really would’ve liked learning how to drink like Carol. 

Since he’s still staring, she says, “Think about it.”

Wade thinks. He thinks hard enough that he misses not one but two trays of water chestnuts and one of champagne (which he prefers to wine because the bubbles offset the disgustingness). “Nope,” he finally answers.

“Nope?”

“Unless Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson finally got my fanmail, then I still don’t know what you’re talking about.” Carol rolls her eyes, then raises her glass to pound it back.

She misses the opportunity when Emma’s voice slips in from behind them and asks, “What are we staring at?”

Watching Carol choke and try not to dribble wine down the front of her dress is sort of like the non-offensive generic holiday gift that keeps on giving, but Carol punishes Wade for his laughter by stomping on his foot. He swears, steps away so Emma—dressed head-to-toe in white like some kind of deranged snow angel; seriously, what _does_ that woman do during shark week?—is truly between the two of them, and quickly answers, “The Drake-McCoy Wholesome Cuteness Variety Hour.”

Emma frowns at him, so he points, and she glances across the hall. There’s no more kissing, thankfully, but their heads are tipped close together and they’re murmuring something to one another, Hank’s big hand planted on Bobby’s hip. Wade’s only hung out with them a couple times, but that’s always happening over at their house: a big hand on Bobby’s hip, or back, or shoulder, or some other PG-rated body part.

He wouldn’t object to seeing the PG-13 version.

Just, you know. If anyone’s asking.

He glances back at Emma, sure he’ll find her scowling, but her face twitches into this weird, uncomfortable expression. It changes the shape of her eyes and the curve of her lips, and Wade— It takes him a minute, okay, because what’s happening is so outside the realm of normal, but:

“Are you—smiling?” he asks. 

The weird expression disappears, and Emma snaps to glare at him. “It’s Christmas,” she says, as though Wade’d somehow missed that memo. “They’re allowed to be disgusting at Christmas.”

“Uh, since when?” Carol demands, but Emma’s already walking away, showing off her killer legs and even-more-killer white boots. She must buy her clothes online. There’s no other explanation.

Next to him, Carol heaves a sigh and finishes the remnants of her wine. “You and your broad-shouldered pieces of ass make me sick,” she declares, and leaves her newest empty glass on the table as she walks away. Wade wants to ask what she’s talking about, again, but then someone touches his elbow.

He spins around, and Nate is there. He’s also almost smiling. Maybe it’s something in the water.

But anyway, he forgets to ask Carol what she’s talking about because he spends the rest of the cocktail hour harassing the shit out of Nate.


	29. 144 Hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous requested: _Can we have some more Darcy Lewis please, perhaps Darcy Lewis: Law Student, or even better Darcy Lewis: Studying for the Bar._

“Darcy?”

Darcy whirls water-fighter style, her plastic fork in one hand and her fiercest look glued onto her face. The line at Boston Market’s nearly out the door, but she’d wanted cornbread. She’d wanted an entire baggie just stuffed to the brim with cornbread, which turned into their biggest combo plus three extra sides, because she’d last eaten—

When?

Dammit, she’d figured this out while she was debating the relative merits of sweet potato casserole versus macaroni and cheese. She can name all eleven factors for child custody, why can’t she remember the last time she ate?

Clint steps back and puts his hands up. “Sorry, Zorro,” he says immediately. Darcy lowers her fork slowly, but he’s still staring at her. “I thought I’d say hi, ‘cause we miss you at work. You, uh, okay?”

No, she wants to say, she’s not okay. She is six days away from the biggest test of her life. She is a little less than 144 hours away from fourteen half-hour essay questions on potentially sixteen different subjects, and 168 hours away from 200 multiple choice questions. She knows how to apply the Rule Against Perpetuities, Clint. There are entire states who say it is not legal malpractice to fuck up the Rule Against Perpetuities, and she knows it.

She must look extra wild-eyed and crazy, because Clint lowers his hands super-slowly. She’s wearing pajama shorts with hotdogs on them, a My Little Pony t-shirt that’s stretched to hell because she tucks her arms into it while she reads (and re-reads) her outlines, and her hair’s up in a bun that sits in the middle of her head. She at least remembers when she last brushed her hair. It was—

Wait.

She’s got this.

“Bar prep’s kind of a bitch, right?” Clint asks gently, and she blinks at him. There’s a smudge of something in the middle of her glasses. She needs to clean them, eventually. 

Instead, she releases a long sigh. “I feel like I’m losing my mind,” she admits. She’s not told that to anyone, even Jane—but then again, Jane stopped calling after she realized Darcy’d developed a new superpower:

Turning mundane conversations into excuses to talk about the law.

She’s never been _that_ law student before.

She feels nuts.

“Next!” the cashier barks, and Darcy jerks her head toward him. 

“That’s me,” she says to Clint, just to be polite, but Clint surges forward. The cashier’s still trying to figure out how to ring up 10 tiny cornbread loaves when Clint pulls out his credit card and hands it over. 

“Here,” he says. Darcy slaps his hand extra-hard. “Ow! Hey, what the fuck’s that for? I’m trying to be nice.”

“I don’t need your pity cornbread,” she snaps. He frowns, she realizes exactly how insane that sounded, and shoves her hands under her glasses to rub her eyes. She took a nap from 4 a.m. to 7 a.m., but otherwise hasn’t slept in the last 48 hours. “Sorry,” she says, with her face covered.

“She okay?” the cashier asks.

Clint squeezes her shoulder. “She’s a week from becoming an actual lawyer,” he says, and leaves Darcy staring at him as he moves to join the actual line.


	30. A Half-Hour Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous requested: _The first time Bucky or Steve ever saw/held Dot? :D_

Their daughter’s about a half-hour old when Steve holds her for the first time.

Lana’d felt understandably weird about having either of them in the delivery room, but it means Steve’s spent the last eighteen-plus hours amped up and awake, trapped in a waiting room and wringing his hands. Other families’d considered them uncertainly, two men holding hands on a couch in the dead of night, but they’d only gotten grins and congratulations when they’d shared the news.

Steve hears his own voice like a mantra, even now: _Our daughter’s about to be born_ , words he never thought he’d say.

But it’s only after the baby’s weighed, measured, and cleaned up that they’re called in, and only after staring at her on Lana’s chest that Lana asks, “Will one of you please take her?” Bucky glances across the bed and nods to Steve, citing something about biology that Steve wants to correct, but Lana’s already picking her up. She’s tiny, with a mess of brown hair and a scrunched-up, disapproving face, and she complains about the change in grip. Of course she does; Lana’s warm and soft, familiar to her, and Steve—

“Hi, Dorothea,” he murmurs. She opens her mouth, threatening to cry, but closes it again. She’s wrapped up but not swaddled, a ridiculous pink hat on her head, and looks just about how you’d expect every newborn to look. Except she’s inherited the Barnes family chin and what Steve really hopes is a smaller, cuter version of his nose, has long fingers that stretch in the air, and steals his breath away with every lip-smack and stretch.

He only realizes that his eyes are wet when Bucky touches his cheek, and he almost jerks away. He hadn’t heard Bucky approach, hadn’t noticed that the conversation between he, Lana, and Evelyn—his aunt, a woman who loves them as fiercely as Steve’s grandmother had—finally ended. Bucky smoothes his thumb along Steve’s cheekbone, then submits to their daughter’s unbearable cuteness and strokes a finger over her outstretched hand. She curls her fingers, trying to grip, and when she succeeds, Bucky smiles.

“And you wanted to wait,” Steve says softly, his voice tripping along the back of his tongue, because something needs to fill the overwhelming silence. Bucky snorts at him, but his hand drifts down to hold onto Steve’s neck and keep him close.

They stand like that for maybe too long, the two of them and their daughter, until she starts screaming. Her lungs are impressive for a newborn, and the hovering nurse smiles as she suggests she’s hungry. 

“That’s the first time we’ve heard her cry,” Bucky says, almost reflexively.

The nurse chuckles. “Oh, honey, that novelty’s gonna run out in record time.”


	31. Girl Children

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex requested: _Dot hosting her very first sleepover and how Steve and Bucky handle the fact that their place is being invaded by tween girls and the aftermath of cleaning up after the party the next day._

“This was a mistake,” Bucky says, and Steve burrows deeper in the comforter.

It is 12:30 a.m. on Saturday morning and all Bucky can hear from downstairs is shrieking. Glorious, delighted, late-elementary school shrieking, because that’s what’s waiting in his living room: seven girls ranging from third to fifth grade. They’re Dot’s Girl Scout troop, or at least those allowed to spend the night, and they’re _loud_.

They’re so loud, in fact, that Tim starts crying, his voice tinny through the baby monitor. Steve groans and emerges from his blanket-cocoon, hair everywhere. Bucky feels a little guilty; there’s an entire gaggle of Hispanic gang-bangers with first appearances tomorrow, and Steve looks like he’s gone six rounds with a heavyweight champion.

“You get the baby, I’ll deal with the girls,” Bucky offers, and Steve nods blearily.

Timmy’s almost one and capable of pulling himself to his feet in the crib, meaning that he’s clutching the cross-bar and screaming when Bucky passes his bedroom. “Daddy’s coming,” he promises. There’s more a fifty-fifty chance that Daddy shows up, but Tim’s pretty good at self-soothing. At least, when not woken up in the middle of the night by:

“What is going _on_ down here?” Bucky demands as soon as his feet hit the bottom stair, and all the shrieking stops immediately. He’s not actually mad—he remembers his first sleepovers, the heady delight of sneaking junk food at midnight and whatever else—but he’s also not afraid to strike fear into the hearts of eight-, nine-, and ten-year-olds. Bailey drops a pillow when he walks into the room, Aubrey half-steps, half-slides off the couch, and Amy’s whole face turns bright red. Emma and Callie, twins, look at one another and then at the floor, and Peyton struggles to thumb off the iHome that’s blaring KidzBop out of the iPod Dot’s _not_ supposed to have without asking. Dot, suspiciously, is not part of the insanity.

No, instead, she’s walking in from the kitchen loaded down with bags of chips, diet sodas that _clearly_ belong to her fathers (or, rather, to Steve), a carton of ice cream, and two boxes of Girl Scout cookies stolen out of their freezer stash. “I need to go back for the cupcakes, but— Daddy!”

She drops everything on the floor. The lid pops off the ice cream and rolls on its side all the way to where Amy’s standing in front of the TV. She’s wearing a feather boa. Bucky is uncertain where she _found_ a feather boa.

At least she, unlike the rest of the girls, is decent enough to pick the lid up and hand it to him.

Dot bites her lower lip. Bucky thinks she might actually cry.

“Girls,” he says, as slowly and calmly as possible. He’s still not mad, exactly, but he’d expected to catch them in a pillow fight, not dancing around in feather boas and— Is that Steve’s Dodgers cap that Bailey’s wearing? Well, anyway, he’d expected some low-level ruckus, not _this_. 

They’re all staring at him. Well, all except Dot—who’s staring at the floor, wibbly-lipped—and Amy, who’s pulled the hood of her sweatshirt all the way over her head and is literally hiding in it. 

“I’m all for having a good time,” he finally says, once the annoyance subsides, “but it’s late, Mister Rogers needs to get up for work tomorrow—”

“I _told_ you,” Amy whispers. Callie sneers at her, but drops the face when Bucky sends her a warning look.

“And,” he continues, once Callie’s avoiding eye contact with him, “you woke the baby up.”

“Can we play with him?” Peyton asks. She’s wearing a dress-up tutu over her pajamas.

“Not at 12:30 in the morning,” Bucky replies very patiently. Too patiently, because it’s 12:30 in the morning, and he’s surrounded by girl children. “Instead, we’re going to play the game called ‘help Dot put the snacks away and then get into your sleeping bags to sleep.’”

The girls all grudgingly agree, half of them helping Dot refill the pantry and fridge while the other half rearranges the sleeping bags and pillows. _Pocahontas_ is paused on the TV, so Bucky unpauses it before he turns out the lights, filling the room with the dull glow of the pre-Revolutionary forest. He inspects the kitchen before letting Dot, Amy, Emma, and Aubrey come back through, and kisses Dot on the head before hassling her into her sleeping bag.

“Are you going to call our parents?” Amy asks, which translates to _please don’t call my parents_.

“Not if you all go to sleep,” Bucky assures her, and waits until they’re all cuddled in and watching the movie to climb the stairs back to bed.

He forgets to check in on Timmy until he walks into their bedroom and finds Steve and Tim _both_ in their bed, Steve with an arm over the baby, who’s spread out like a starfish. Bucky sighs and shucks his t-shirt to climb into bed with them. 

Steve’s not entirely awake, but he half-opens his eyes anyway. “Never again,” he mutters.

“At least not until we invest in earplugs,” Bucky agrees, and Steve smiles at him in his half-sleep.


	32. Count of a Hundred

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another sort of combination, because it fit together.
> 
> Alex requested: _Okay last prompt from me: Annual Office Picnic and someone(probably Clint or Darcy or Bucky or anyone really) decides it's too damn hot and that they should have a water balloon fight to cool off at the end of the day. Cue everyone getting really competitive and into it by picking teams and making it a capture a flag game too, while getting soaked from the fight but having way too much fun to care._
> 
> lazygirlblogging requested: _MPU prompt! I love when the whole gang gets to hang out for whatever random idea Tony cooks up, so how about a party or a barbecue or a holiday-of-your-choosing celebration with everyone? Hope that's not too vague and plot-less_
> 
> I realize that it's not at Tony's, but he sort of created this event, so I put them together. Please forgive me if that is unacceptable! But this is pretty fun.

“Men,” Tony says, and Pepper clears her throat. He looks at her, she tips her head to the side, and he rolls his eyes. “Men and also not-men,” he corrects, and she nods. “Today, we have been challenged by the oppressive overlords of the skins-and-Peggy team. They are hateful. They are cruel. They are probably communists. I mean, have you seen Peggy’s car? She drives a Golf. Definitely a—”

“Tony,” Bruce warns from the sidelines. Across the field at the park, the other group is huddled up like a football team.

“Right. Point is, they must be destroyed.” 

The legion of his water balloon team looks at him seriously. They’re already a little damp, thanks to the first volley of balloons twenty minutes ago (thanks, Clint, for staring this whole nightmare), but they mean business. Pepper’s pulled her hair up, Darcy’s traded in her pants for the boy-short bottoms of her bathing suit, Maria’s shucked her stupid sandals, and Natasha—

“Head in the game, Romanoff.”

Natasha rolls her eyes and finishes whatever text she’s shooting off.

The summer picnic, with burgers and hot dogs and small children, had been Tony’s idea, a nice break from their usual summer ritual of hanging out at his place. Okay, so the plan’d originally been _to_ hang at his place, but there was something weird going on with the pool filter, right now, and the yard is presently littered with pieces from his do-it-yourself filter repairs. Which are going just fine, Bruce, thank you. Now, Jane, Thor, the cute, fat Odin-baby, and Bruce are settled into lawn chairs with Miles and Dot, watching preparations for the battle royale.

The huddle across the park cheers and breaks up, Steve leading the group like a glistening blond Adonis with no shirt on. Bucky, Peggy, Clint, and Phil all trot behind him, limbered up and ready to go. Clint, by the way, has one hell of an arm. Steve’s fast, Bucky’s wily, and Phil—

Phil’s not a threat. Phil’s physically incapable of being a threat. It’s the rest of them Tony’s worried about.

“One hit, you’re down for a count of twenty,” he reminds them, passing along the bucket of water balloons. Darcy stuffs six down her shirt and then ties it at the waist to hold them in; Maria tucks extras under her arm. “All subsequent hits, all the way through a hundred. Miles is on back-up balloon duty. If you capture their flag—”

“Just put your lips together and blow?” Pepper deadpans. She’s also the last person to take balloons out of the bucket, which means Tony can slosh the water in the bottom at her. She jumps back and kicks him for good measure. 

He balances three balloons between his hands and looks at his team. “Ready?”

“This isn’t a matter of life or death,” Natasha sighs. She slides her phone across the grass, and Dot jumps up to retrieve it. “It’s only—”

“Go!”

They scatter across the park, armed and dangerous, but Steve’s team is already on the move. Peggy and Clint hang in the back near the flag—and by flag, Tony means one of his ties, tied to a stick—with a reserve of balloons. Smart. Smarter still, Bucky’s on point, which is good because he might actually be the fastest. Tony hits Steve right in the gorgeous chest and he drops to his knees for his count of twenty, but Bucky dodges and Tony’s smacked from behind before he can twist around to see who hit him. “Twenty,” Steve says, and Tony thinks it’s a warning until the other man’s up on his feet and taking off down the field.

Tony’s never counted faster in his life.

By the time he stands up, the field’s a mess bodies. Darcy’s sprawled out, her shirt soaked thanks to falling face-first onto all the balloons stuffed down it, and nearby, Clint’s counting to hundred as fast as he possibly can. Pepper whistles, then loses her footing on a wet patch of grass and is nailed by Peggy, dropping the flag; Maria tries to grab it, but gets hit, too. Back at their home base, Natasha and Bucky are in a stand-off, the former armed with three balloons while the latter bobs and weaves. She’s so focused on Bucky’s floating-like-a-butterfly that she misses Phil coming up behind her; Tony prepares to alert her with a whistle of his own, but then Steve nails him in the shoulder.

“A hundred,” he says smugly, and Tony starts counting. 

Pepper bounces up after hitting twenty and immediately retaliates against Peggy before grabbing the flag and taking off with it, but in a way, it’s already too late. Clint makes it to a hundred, jumps to his feet, and skids through wet grass to stop her. Except he’s out of balloons and Miles’s to busy texting to kick the fresh bucket over (god bless teenagers with crushes), so Pepper vaults over Darcy and continues on her way. Maria, on the other hand, dispatches Clint with a balloon to the leg.

Back at the flag—Tony’s on seventy, by the way, don’t think he’s not counting—Natasha’s down and Phil’s guarding Bucky, his arms full of balloons as they jog back toward their base. It’s slow and purposeful, Tony knows, and before he makes it to a hundred and can stand, Phil hits Pepper right in the ass. She squeaks, then drops to the grass like she’s supposed to, and starts counting.

She’s fifteen feet from their base. Natasha’s eyeing her pile of balloons and nearing a hundred. When Maria gets too close, Phil takes her out, too. 

And that’s when he says, “Run for it.” 

Bucky breaks for home base right as Darcy pops to her feet, and she shouts for Miles to kick the bucket over. Miles drops his phone but listens, and then Tony’s throwing balloons to her for her to lob in Bucky’s direction. The first misses but the second hits, Bucky falling to his knees; before Tony can register the victory, Clint grabs the flag and keeps running.

He only realizes that Steve’s behind him when he and Darcy are both felled in rapid succession, Darcy sprawling all over the grass a second time. Pepper pops up and then’s down again thanks to Phil, but then Natasha nails him in the shoulder. Steve manages to catch Maria in the arm, and Tony thinks Natasha’s done for, too, but instead she hits Steve and takes off running down the field. She’s fast, avoiding Bucky as he grabs at her ankles, and skids to a stop right in front of Peggy.

She has one balloon; Peggy has three. Worse, Clint’s almost completed the goal, and is about to tie the tie around his neck.

“Do you feel lucky?” Peggy asks. Her Dirty Harry leaves a lot to be desired.

“Yes,” Natasha answers, and lets the balloon fly.

But if you’re any good at math, you’ll realize that one of Natasha with two of them meant the skins-and-Peggy team was bound to win, and you’ll be right. Because she hits Clint in the chest, then Peggy takes her down, and the game ends with Peggy wearing Tony’s old tie. They’re pretty much all flopped out on the grass, sprawled in the wet and little shreds of water balloons. Only Peggy, smug and superior, trots off to help herself to a beer.

“Good game,” Tony pants. Darcy, who’s an arm’s length away from him, reaches over for an awkward high five. “Next time, more running and less counting.”

“There are still a lot of water balloons left, you know,” Miles comments and Tony props himself up on his elbows to glance over. And of course, the kid’s right: there’s two buckets, plus a pile of pink ones under Dot’s chair that she’s hoarded because they’re “pretty.”

“So?” he asks. Famous last words.

Tony decides to call the next game, _Cream my kid with water balloons because he got me in the face._


	33. Rubbing Elbows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> iamironmanda requested: _Another prompt: Tony goes to some fancy event thing (maybe Science related?) for SI and shows Bruce off._

After the twenty-third time Tony asks, “Have you met my husband?”, Bruce stops counting.

Bruce’s never liked events like this one, an elbow-rubbing dinner to celebrate the new Stark Industries regional office about to open in Atlanta, but this time, he doesn’t have a choice. Obadiah’d called Tony seven times in the week running up to the event, insisting they both come—“You as the Stark heir, the husband to show your new family values,” he’d declared, and Bruce’d tried not to scowl at that—and, when Tony’d finally caved, he sent the company jet. He’d also sent them to an expensive tailor for suits, bought them dinner at a ridiculous steakhouse the night before, and pretended to care a great deal about Bruce’s life, career, and interests. The surf and turf was, predictably, delicious; the company, less so.

Now, Bruce shakes hands with another stranger, the names and faces blending together until he can’t tell who he’s already met. He hates the Tony who emerges at these sorts of gatherings, fake and extra-glossy, but it’s not as profound tonight. Twice, Tony even digs out his cell phone to show off a picture or two of Miles, even though Bruce is certain Socialite Number Six is just playing polite.

They end up in a group of scientists shortly before dinner, talking about engineering and the limitations of practical physics instead of meandering through polite small talk, and Bruce feels relieved to see Tony laugh. But Tony never lifts his hand from the small of Bruce’s back or drifts away, and when the head of the Atlanta research division says, “A pleasure to meet you, Doctor Banner,” Bruce swears the glimmer of Tony’s smile’s all for him.

In his keynote address, Obadiah purposely points Bruce out to the crowd and spends three entire minutes rambling through his life story, proof that last night’s fake politeness served a particular purpose. Bruce forces a smile and nods through his list of accolades, and after dinner, meets a dozen new people who all claim that they to hear about his job.

They don’t, of course, but they want to shake hands and mingle with the person who stands to inherit all of Tony’s stock should something happen, and Bruce fakes a smile through the mechanical questions. Tony stands close by, dropping in jokes and one-liners when he can, and finally drags Bruce away as he’s explaining the child welfare code for a thirteenth time.

Bruce assumes they’re headed to the bar, but Tony drags him out onto the wide concrete porch outside the ballroom instead, and, after a cursory look around, pushes him against the nearest wall and kisses the breath right out of him. Bruce considers pushing him away, but Tony’s mouth is greedy and desperate, and he sinks into the contact. His arm ends up around Tony’s neck, fingers in his hair as Tony grips his stupid, starched shirt; they only break apart when a woman yelps in surprise before backing into the ballroom and shutting the wide double doors behind her.

They stand in the cool Atlanta air, Tony’s nose against Bruce’s jaw, when Tony murmurs, “You are a gift. Seriously. If I ever complain about you for even five minutes, remind me that you are the greatest gift I’ve ever received.”

Bruce laughs, a little breathless, and scratches his fingers through Tony’s hair. “Because I do well in the role of eye candy?” he asks, teasingly.

It brings Tony’s head up. There’s something momentarily helpless in his eyes, wild and lost, and Bruce feels his own shoulders soften. He lets his hand rest on the back of Tony’s neck, the other holding onto his side under his suit coat; for a few seconds, they just watch one another.

“You just smiled and smoozed with, like, eighty assholes, and you never once complained,” he finally says. Bruce wants to reach up and steal another kiss, but he doesn’t. “Nobody else in the entire universe’d do that for me. That’s why.”

“Good thing you’ve got me,” Bruce replies. His voice catches, though, softer than he means it to be, and they stare at each other for one second longer.

They don’t use the words _I love you_ very often. They save them, savor them, make them special.

But when Tony kisses him again, Bruce doesn’t need the words. Because he knows.


	34. Risk and Reward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lazygirlblogging requested: _Prompt (second because I'm greedy like that): I'd love to see Clint and Miles hanging out. Or Clint and Phil and Miles hanging out. Or Phil and MIles hanging out, rolling their eyes at Tony._
> 
> This connects only vaguely to the piece before it.

“You know we’re losing at Risk to a kid, here, right?” Clint asks, peering at the board in front of him. His yellow pieces are mostly huddled in Australia, all pathetic and sad-looking. He’s also got a small corner of Asia and a couple territories in South America, but he knows that won’t last.

“At least it’s Bruce’s kid,” Phil comments, and Miles laughs while Phil places his armies.

Tony and Bruce are off at some big event in Atlanta and Dot’s struck disgusting with some sorta flu bug she’s passed off to her dads, and that means Clint’s now stuck here, sitting at Stark’s kitchen table and playing risk with Stark’s kid. Miles’s wearing Star Wars pajama pants and a tank top, watching Phil’s every piece placement extra-carefully. Phil’s holding onto North America, still, but Miles’s got Africa, most of Europe, and a good portion of Asia, and Clint’s about ninety percent sure he’s got cards to trade in. What’s worse, he’s stroking Jarvis like that evil cat in _Inspector Gadget_ , and the purring’s pretty distracting. 

They’ve played a half-dozen different games since the guys left the night before, including a Lego game on the Wii, two versions of Monopoly, the most vindictive game of Clue Clint’s ever seen (in which Miles kept moving Phil into rooms he _knew_ weren’t the crime scene just to fuck with him), and now, Risk. Round two of Risk, actually, because they’d played last night, too.

Miles’d wiped the floor with them. Clint swears he cheats.

And now, he’s about to do it again.

Phil mostly fortifies, not really trying to lessen Miles’s stranglehold, and the effect’s devastating. Miles trades in his cards, loads up a couple of his Asian territories, and then snatches the continent right out of their grasp. Clint tries to protect Australia, but know it’s only a matter of time before total defeat; and that’s why, honestly, he’s not super disappointed when Dummy spooks the cat and he runs across the board, disrupting everything.

“Dammit, Jarvis!” Miles yells. Phil quirks an eyebrow. “Sorry,” he immediately says, and starts cleaning up the pieces.

They snatch ice cream sandwiches out of the freezer and head outside with the dogs after that, lounging on patio furniture and licking the sticky cookie bits off their fingers. Clint knows Miles squirreled away an extra sandwich, but says nothing about it; Phil brings out coffee, and Clint steals it out of his grip to take a sip. He’s still swallowing when Miles remarks, “You know, before I moved here, I didn’t really know any gay couples.”

Clint almost snorts coffee. Phil, gracefully, removes the mug before he can spill. “None?” he asks.

Miles shakes his head. “I think part of it’s how my parents grew up,” he admits, shrugging a little. He’s a teenager, alright, not committing to anything. “Cultural or something. But then, I moved in with Bruce, who had a boyfriend—”

Clint tries not to choke on his ice cream.

“—and met Dot’s dads and you guys.” He pauses. “Plus, Natasha and Pepper.”

He steals a look over his shoulder at the both of them, and Phil narrows his eyes. “Please tell me I don’t need to check the iPad browsing history before you go to bed tonight.”

“No!” Miles squeaks. Clint watches his cheeks darken, and he laughs as he balls up the wrapper in his hand. It’s a nice night, warm and inviting, and he feels like he could nod off out here. “It’s just cool that being gay is totally normal,” the kid continues after a couple seconds. “This guy in my class once said he thought he liked other guys, and people were kind of jerks about it.”

“Kids are jerks by definition,” Clint points out. Phil sends him a warning look, and he shrugs. “Sorry, but I watched Barney play ‘smear the queer’ a lot, growing up. Kids get it in their head that different means wrong and it turns pretty fucking ugly.”

“And,” Phil adds, rolling his eyes at what Clint assumes is his word choice, “most teenagers don’t know how to deal with their sexuality. They know black and white, not all the gray area in the middle.”

“Like how Tony’s not gay?” Clint picks his head up to look over at Miles, who shrugs. “I mean, he’s the one with the iPad history you need to watch out for. And he’s into, like, everything, not just guys.”

“I need to go bleach my brain,” Clint groans, covering his face. Worse, even Phil looks a little flabbergasted. “Just— No. No, it’s bad enough we’re sleeping down the hall from ‘where the magic happens—’”

“I still can’t believe that’s what Tony calls their master bedroom,” Phil remarks.

“He’s called it worse,” Miles says, licking his fingers clean.

“—I’m not also thinking about all the things Tony’s into.” He drags his hands away from his face. “And neither should you,” he notes, pointing a finger over at Miles. “He’s your dad now. That’s supposed to be horrifying, not funny.”

Miles grins. “But I can use it against him the next time he tries to take my cell phone away,” he notes.

Phil, very calmly, sips his coffee. “A good strategy, unless Bruce already knows everything Tony’s into.” He pauses for a second, glancing over at Miles. “And worse if he knows and _likes_ it.”

There’s a beat, just one, where both Clint and Miles really think about that comment.

And then, their twin shouts of, “Oh, _ew_!” echo into the quiet night.


	35. Sights for Sore Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> shorthappylife requested: _Also, I'm sure you have ideas about whether or not they'll get married, or how/when that will happen, but I'd love to see Phil's family harping on him about proposing._
> 
> anonymous requested: _I am utterly charmed by your version of Phil's family (so much so that I was reading another fic and went: No, but Phil's sisters are named... no wait, that's not actually canon). Can I have some more Clint-and-Phil-and-Phil's-family? Especially Sam?_
> 
> Of course, I had to combine these. And of course, it didn't go entirely as planned, because the boys do what they want.

“I’m not having this conversation with you for the hundredth time, Samantha,” Phil says, and maybe takes the corner a little too fast.

It’s his mother’s birthday, meaning that the entire family is down at the farm except Phil. No, Phil’s just finished day five of a what should have been three day trial, and he’s officially sick of every _thing_ and every _one_. What’s worse, he’d not seen the egregious error in sending Clint on his behalf until about twenty-five minutes ago.

When, predictably, all _three_ of his sisters called, together, on speaker phone. Phil can picture them huddled on the bed in the master bedroom, their heads bent over the phone while the rest of the family runs around outside. They’ve already promised that Clint’s running a backyard soccer game. 

Phil’s willing to bet good money his sisters suggested it.

“He’s already part of the family,” Jenny points out, and Phil decides there’s no shame in speeding through a yellow light while he’s on hands-free. At least he can’t be pulled over for inattentive driving. “Running around with the kids—”

“ _All_ the kids,” Amy adds.

“—joining in for Mom’s birthday, helping Joe with the yard work . . . ” Jenny trails off, leaving room for Sam to hum in approval. “How is he still on the market?”

“I’m pretty sure that our dating relationship qualifies as taking him _off_ the market,” Phil returns.

“Then how come you haven’t marked him as yours, yet?” Sam chimes in.

“Oh, so you meant the _cattle_ market, then,” he shoots back, and the girls laugh at him like it’s all really, deeply funny.

He can’t rush through the next light, so he slams on his brakes and resists the urge to rest his forehead against the steering wheel. Day six of his quick-and-dirty trial is Monday morning, and what he wants more than anything is Clint. Not just any version of Clint, either, but Clint in crappy sweats, with feet up on the coffee table and a beer in his hand while they channel surf through all the best reality television. He wants the Clint who’ll wait until he unwinds to drag him into the bedroom and wind him up again until he’s panting and helpless. And he wants the Clint who insists on starting their Saturday with horrible Folger’s coffee and a three-mile run.

He wants his partner, not to be stuck at a red light in another state.

And he wants his sisters to stop pestering him about—

“He misses you,” Amy says suddenly, and Phil feels himself unclench his hands. “He won’t own to it, I’m pretty sure, but he keeps kicking around here like somebody cut off his left arm.”

“He sat for an hour and went through old pictures with Mom,” Sam adds.

“More like two,” Jenny tacks on, and somehow, that only broadens the emptiness that creeps into Phil’s chest. “If you don’t want to marry him, you don’t have to marry him,” she continues as he drives across the intersection, reconsiders, and ends up pulling a U-turn outside a Walgreens. “But if he makes you happy, it’s our job to keep reminding you that he should stick around.”

“Not if,” Phil corrects. One of them squeaks, and he rolls his eyes. “Listen,” he says, switching lanes so he can pull onto the highway, “I need to go. I’ll call you in a couple hours.”

On the other end, Amy heaves a sigh. “Don’t be pissed at us just because—”

“I’m not pissed,” he replies, and he’s surprised how much he means it. He glances at the clock on the dashboard, mentally trips through a couple calculations, and then smiles to himself. “If you don’t hear from me in three hours, give me a call.”

“Phil—”

“Three hours,” he interrupts, purposely talking over Sam, and then hangs up.

When Sam calls three hours later, he’s halfway between the airport and the farm, speeding through the pitch-black Midwestern night in a rental car.

And when he pulls up the gravel drive at ten minutes until midnight, Clint’s waiting on the porch for him, the world’s greatest sight for sore eyes.


	36. Godparentage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> raiining requested: _Can i request a short fic Bout whoever the boys ask to be Tommy's (Timmy's?) godparent? Unless of course this is sekrit information necessary to future fics!!_

“I’m not sure,” Bruce says quietly, watching Timothy Barnes sleep.

The running joke around the office is that the last two years’ve constituted a baby boom, and that Timmy—small and quiet, very much unlike his older sister—is the last in that long line. Bruce doubts that, somehow, but he pretends anyway as he watches the tiny boy sleep against his shirt. He’s only holding onto him while Bucky helps Tony with some impossible leak in the garage; Bruce suspects his next act will involve an emergency plumber.

Timmy yawns, gummy and sweet, and smacks his lips before he settles again. 

“You’re already Dot’s godfather in everything but name,” Steve reminds him. He’s settled into the corner of the couch, languid and relaxed. Bruce suspects he’s not interacted with people over the age of seven in his last three weeks of paternity leave. “He’s going to grow up calling you Uncle Bruce the same way she does. It seems a little unbalanced, any other way.”

Bruce smiles softly and glances down at the baby again. His eyelashes are long and dark, but, unlike Dot at birth, he’s practically bald. Bald, and also perpetually losing his hat. “Tony helped you find your job,” he says, fishing the baby hat out from between the couch cushions. “He supported you through the end of your law school career and your first year at the office. I’m just—”

“Our other best friend,” Steve interrupts. When Bruce glances over, Steve’s staring at him. “For almost as long as I’ve known you and Tony, you two have been a unit,” he insists, and Bruce rolls his lips together. He tries not to duck his head, to not feel exposed, but even after almost three years as Tony Stark’s other half, it’s surprisingly hard. “You’re as important to Dot as he is, you’re as constant in our lives as he is, and at the end of the day, I trust you with our children as much as I trust Tony. Sometimes, even more.” Bruce snorts a tiny laugh at that, but his laughter causes Timmy to grumble. “We discussed this for weeks, Bruce,” he continues, “and you’re the one name we came back to every time. There’s no one else.”

Bruce nods slightly and looks down at the baby. When he strokes a tiny hand, it opens slowly, fingers stretching. “Are you sure about Darcy as his godmother, though?” he asks.

Steve falls silent and only laughs when Bruce raises his head and the other man can catch his tiny smile. “And that’s the second reason you should be his godfather: to balance out her influence, just in case.”

Bruce chuckles and shakes his head, and devotes a moment to the ridiculousness of his life: married, a father, with friends who trust him enough to name him the godparent of their very small child. But then, before he can really wrap his head around the whole concept, there’s a crash in the garage, followed by the unmistakable hiss of flowing water.

Timmy starts screaming, the dogs start barking, and both he and Steve are off the couch in an instant.

“We’re okay!” Tony yells. He rushes into the living room, Bucky on his heels, both of them dripping wet and sloshing water everywhere. “We’re okay, nobody’s hurt! In other news, we need a plumber.”

Bruce sighs. “I already found the numbers for three,” he says, and hands the baby off to Steve.

“See?” Steve asks, smiling. “That’s why we asked _you_.”


	37. Five Things Nick Fury Did that You Knew Nothing About

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> saranoh requested: _What does Fury do at work? Because I really have no idea of what his job entails other than terrifying everyone._

**March 2012**

“Oswald or Barton,” Hill votes.

“Barton,” Rogers says, still flipping through his interview notes.

“I’d say Oswald first, Barton a close second,” Potts decides, and folds her hands on top of her portfolio.

Nick Fury leans back in his chair at the head of the conference room table. They’ve spent two full, disastrous days interviewing candidates for Pym’s position. Rogers missed half the interviews the second day after his kid threw up all over her daycare provider, Potts stepped out of a third of them to deal with Stark’s usual meltdowns, and Hill and Coulson switched seats so often that Nick’s still not sure who interviewed whom. The field of fourteen is now a field of two: one a fresh-faced girl from the other end of the state, the other a guy with a whole lot of life experience and two years of legislative research under his belt.

He knows which one he’s going to choose, but that doesn’t stop him from scanning the table one last time. Across the way, Hill’s watching him, her face carefully blank.

Nick nods to her. “Rank them.”

“Sir—”

“I can’t take your vote into account if they’re fifty-fifty, and these two are tying it up.” Rogers quirks a tiny smile. “Rank them.”

She presses her lips into a tight line and, just for a few seconds, glances down at her legal pad. Nick knows it’s blank. He’s interviewed a lot of people with Maria Hill over the years, and she’s never once written down a single note.

“Barton first,” she finally answers, and Nick nods.

“Then Barton it is.”

 

**June 2012**

“And given that it’s a stupid-ass demand, I’ve elected to ignore it,” Nick barks down the phone. The assistant attorney general in charge of whatever office’s responsible for bossing local district attorneys around starts rambling through his political bullshit, and Nick swears he’s getting a headache right behind his dead eye. “No, you listen to _me_. You want me to pass the case over, you put your boss on the phone. Your actual boss, not some whiny supervising attorney who’s practiced for all of ten minutes longer than you. Until that happens, Killgrave’s ours.”

Once he’s slammed the receiver down, he spends a long time staring at the case file on his desk.

He knows next to nothing about Zebediah Killgrave, but that doesn’t mean he can’t feel the shit storm rolling in across the plain.

 

**September 2012**

“Scott Summers!” Nick says, grinning, and Summers stops cutting his steak.

Nick’s got less than no tolerance for attorneys who jump straight from law school to the ethics committee. It’s lazy lawyering, pure and simple, and the reason he hired Coulson out of the commission was to keep those assholes from ruining a perfectly good attorney. But unlike Coulson, Summers’s no exception to the general rule, with this thick glasses and his smarmy smile, and he watches the guy wipe his mouth before he offers a hand. Across the table, his pretty wife smiles blithely. She’s probably confused about why there’s a stranger in a black suit interrupting her date.

“Fury,” Summers greets, his voice tight. “Jean, you remember Nick Fury, don’t you? He’s the local district attorney.”

“Oh, right!” Jean replies, and offers her hand across the table. Nick smiles and tries to imagine a world where nice girls like her don’t end up with assholes like Summers. “You’re Mister Stark’s boss.”

“I am.”

“He—” She stops for a moment, and Nick raises his eyebrows. “Well, actually, he doesn’t really talk about you,” she admits.

Nick laughs. “No, he probably does not,” he replies. He turns back to Summers, who’s still staring him down. “I just wanted to make sure you got the letter I sent you about one of ours. Barton?” The color drains slowly from Summers’s face. “I’d hate for something that important to get lost in the mail, but I know sometimes, in your work, that happens.”

Summers coughs, then forces a tight smile. “I got it.”

“Good,” Nick replies. He claps Summers on the shoulder and flashes a grin at Jean. “You two have a good dinner, then.”

“Thank you, Mister Fury,” Jean calls after them, and Nick walks right out of the restaurant.

 

**December 2012**

“Matt, please,” Nick says, leaning back in his desk chair and rubbing the bridge of his nose. It’s ten after six, and he desperately wants to head home. He’s trying out a new crockpot recipe Sitwell suggested, he’s picked up the full boxed set of _The Pacific_ , and the last place he wants to spend his Wednesday night is stuck behind his desk and arguing with Matt Murdock. “I hear your concern, but I’ve known Tony Stark for years. I hired him right after everything in his life— If he didn’t tell you, that’s not my problem,” he interrupts, because Murdock’s trying to run right over him. “But trust me when I say that it’ll be worse on the kid to lose the guy than to stay with him.”

Murdock asks a lot more questions after that—about Stark’s work ethic, about his relationship with Doctor Banner, about potential for lingering drug use—and Nick sighs his way through every damn question. Finally, he swings his chair around to look out the window. 

“Here’s what I know about Tony Stark,” he says, cutting into another one of Murdock’s endless worries. “The guy walked into this office a self-centered asshole who though he owned the courtroom, and in the last five years, that’s changed. Not disappeared, but changed. You break up their little family, and you’ll find out pretty quick that you’ve just undone the last five years of progress and turned him back into the guy who screwed up at Cramer and March.”

After that, there are no more questions.

 

**January 2013**

“Lemme get this straight,” Nick says, leaning his arms on his desk. Across the way, Rogers is extra-squirrelly, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “You’ve got a statute that perfectly fits the crime—”

“Yes.”

“—easy probable cause to _charge_ the crime—”

“Yes.”

“—and you think the asshole responsible is a shoe-in for a plea deal?” Rogers nods, but it’s nervous. Stuttering, like he’s suddenly the skinny kid in the picture Barnes keeps on his desk. Nick frowns at him. “Then what the hell is the problem with charging it?”

“It, uh.” Rogers pauses to glance down at the pocket-sized statute book he brought into the office with him. “It’s the nature of the crime charged, sir.”

Nick tries not to roll his eye at the honorific, but then loses the battle. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

“It’s—” Rogers draws in a breath, holds it, and then lets it out. “The charge would be level seven felony bestiality, sir.”

And it takes Nick literally five minutes before he can stop laughing long enough to tell Rogers to charge the damn goat-fucker.


	38. Side Effects

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> rumbelledearie requested: _Prompt: I'd love to see Bruce being a badass in court and Tony (because he has nothing else to do that day) sitting in and getting turned on by his husband's (or it could even be set before Tony and Bruce get together) courtroom badassery._

It’s about five minutes into Bruce’s fifteen minute oral argument that Tony realizes two things in quick succession:

First, that Bruce arguing in front of the appellate court is really, super, incredibly hot.

And second, that Tony so picked the wrong pants for _watching_ Bruce’s incredibly hot argument. Like, seriously.

The case focuses on a constitutional challenge to the language used in the child welfare code, all of it confusing, technical, and actually super boring. Boring enough, in fact, that Tony and Bruce’d spent three days trying to figure out whether they could call the court and dissuade them out of oral argument. But, since calling the appellate court stupid in any form’s apparently a bad idea—according to Nick, at least—they’d trucked out to Clarion County for oral arguments in the big old Clarion County courthouse.

And since Bruce is the resident expert on child welfare law, and Bruce prosecuted the case in the first place (not that they usually call it prosecuting when it involves cute little kids), Bruce is the one up there at the podium, leaning slightly forward, fielding the court’s surprisingly astute questions.

Tony finds this all incredibly sexy.

He always finds Bruce sexy—like, if it’s a day that ends in –y, there’s definitely a need for Tony to run hands all over Bruce’s body, everybody knows that—but there’s something special about the way he argues in front of the court. Maybe it’s the fact he’s wearing a trim black suit and a super-crisp shirt, maybe it’s the cadence of his voice, maybe it’s how he flicks his glasses out of his pocket when he needs to read from the record. Tony can’t put his finger on it. All he knows is, he keeps fidgeting at counsel table because these slacks leave absolutely no room to, uh, maneuver.

You know what he means, right?

Good. 

By the time Bruce sits down to let the other side wander through their rebuttal, then, Tony’s seriously trying not to strain anything. What’s worse, the quickly-fraying strands of his self-control nearly snap in two when Bruce glances over at him and asks, “It go okay?”

Uh, only if “okay” is defined as “making your husband want to jump your bones in open court,” but of course, Tony can’t actually say that aloud. Instead, he swallows. “Went great,” he murmurs back, and Bruce’s smile could probably kill a man at twenty paces.

After the argument finishes and they pack up their bags, Bruce mutters something about finding the men’s room and Tony can hardly nod. He’s considering a strategic bag reposition to deal with the present problem, and following Bruce in that suit absolutely does not help issues. No, the only thing that helps is discovering that the men’s room consists only of a sink, two urinals, and two stalls, and that it is totally empty.

Bruce turns to say something, probably about the argument.

The words turn into a muffled, incoherent sound against Tony’s lips.

He doesn’t exactly mean to press Bruce into the slowly-closing bathroom door until he does, and the thing slams with a bang that can probably be heard from space. Bruce resists for a second, mostly out of surprise, but then his fingers clutch at Tony’s suit coat and he is as gloriously greedy in receiving as Tony is in giving. Legs tangle in that way that puts thighs in exactly the right place, and Tony will never deny rolling his hips forward.

Bruce groans. Tony bites his lower lip before pulling away, and Bruce spends a half-second chasing his mouth.

“Do you know the very long list of things I am going to do to you when we get home?” he asks. His own voice sounds breathless and hungry. When’d this start happening, this thing where being in a committed, functional, happy relationship—a marriage, even—was hotter than an entire truckload of really dirty porn? “Because the only list longer is the list of things I will totally let you do to me, in good conscience, in any room of the house you want, because—”

“Tony,” Bruce says. He clearly still has some control of his faculties. Tony’ll need to fix that.

“I’ll even include accessories, if you want, I—”

“Tony, I do actually need to— Uhm.” Tony blinks. When he pulls back the couple inches to look at Bruce’s face, he’s pink around the edges. Oh. Oh, he means it then, this isn’t just a dodge to avoid high-quality bathroom sexy times.

Well, then.

“But when we get home?” he asks, because Bruce is still sandwiched between him and the door.

Bruce levels him a truly unimpressed look. “Have I ever turned you down?” 

“Point,” Tony replies, and kisses the corner of his mouth before he lets him go.


	39. Non-Emergent Emergencies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> pastelandcomicbooks requested: _Jarvis or one of the dogs get sick. Tony gets really upset._

The vet’s been gone with Jarvis for exactly three and a half minutes when Tony starts panicking.

Standing in the antiseptic-scented exam room at the ludicrously expensive emergency vet, Pepper tries not to roll her eyes. Tony’d apparently watched Jarvis pace, cry, and climb in and out of the litter box for hours—but then waited until Bruce and Miles left to deliver Ganke back to his mother’s to shove the cat in the carrier, call Pepper, and demand she meet him here. 

At the emergency vet, in her jeans and slouchy, I-am-home-for-the-night-thank-you t-shirt, at 9:30 p.m.

He’s also ignoring the constant chimes of his cell phone, meaning that Bruce is probably worried and/or pissed off. Pepper will look forward to hearing all about that state of affairs at work tomorrow morning.

Tony twists to look at the exam room door for the fifth time in those three minutes. “They’ve been gone a long time.”

She sighs. “They’ve been gone three minutes.”

“Three minutes is, by definition, a long time.”

“To x-ray a cat?” Tony nods, and Pepper tips her head to the side. “Tony, it takes more time to x-ray a human. A well-behaved, reasonable human who didn’t try to bite the doctor twice.”

“Cats are smaller,” he returns, because apparently, logic applies to every aspect of his life except small, furry, angry creatures with stupid names.

She pinches the bridge of her nose to resist sighing again. He’s wringing his hands, his leg is jumping, and he’s obviously really worried. Heaving sighs in his direction will do no good. Instead, she just says, “Give it time,” and leans against the wall next to his very uncomfortable plastic chair.

Tony nods curtly, but she knows he’s struggling to keep his worry contained. She imagines the thousand thoughts rushing through his head: surgeries (but not the bills), recovery time, what happens if the dogs’ favorite object of torment is actually ill, what’ll happen to their family dynamic if— Well. She’s certain that the foremost among his laundry list of worst case scenarios is that one, wondering what will happen to Bruce and Miles—the cat’s favorite people in the world—if the cat dies.

Of course, worrying about that is ridiculous. Bruce and Miles love Tony. The cat’s fate won’t change that.

But since logic is apparently irrelevant right now, Pepper squeezes Tony’s shoulder and feels the vibrations of his bouncing leg run all the way up her arm.

The vet walks in less than a minute later, the cat in his grip, and Tony literally leaps out of the chair. “There was no need to do x-rays after all,” he explains, and places the annoyed-looking Jarvis on the exam table. The cat immediately retreats into his carrier, and when the vet tries to close the door, hisses like the hounds of hell are on his heels.

“Because he’s that sick?” Tony asks immediately. The worry no longer qualifies as “contained;” no, it’s right out in the open, radiating through him.

Irritatingly, the vet smiles. “No. I did a second abdominal exam and then played a hunch.” He produces a small vial of medicine and slides it across the table. “Your cat is just extremely constipated.”

Pepper usually credits herself with composure, especially when it comes to dealing with Tony Stark, but she can’t stop herself from gaping at him when the vet announces that the “completely dire and life-threatening” problem is in fact _constipation_. Which is why, composure be damned, she turns and demands, “You dragged me out here for a constipated cat?” 

Tony’s hands immediately jump into the air, and he steps purposely out of her reach. She knows he expects to be righteously smacked. “I didn’t know he was constipated! I thought he was dying!”

“To be fair,” the vet comments, still smiling, “your husband’s right. Cats—”

“Oh, _no_ ,” Pepper interrupts. She seriously considers jabbing a finger at the man and his infuriating little grin, but thinks that might be rude. “I am absolutely not his wife.”

“And she’s also definitely not my husband,” Tony chimes in, “even though I’m about eighty-seven percent sure she wears the pants in her own rel— Ow!”

He tries to draw away, but she smacks him again. “You said he was ‘not long for this world,’ Tony!”

“Because I thought he wasn’t long for this world!” he defends. When she narrows her eyes at him, he backs himself into the corner. “Can we focus less on non-spousal abuse and more on how I can fix my cat? Because I’m pretty sure my actual spouse’s noticed I’m missing, _and_ that our cat’s missing, and I’d rather not—”

She throws up her hands. “Sure,” she says, but she spends the rest of the so-called consultation standing with her arms crossed and half-glaring at Tony.

In the parking lot, after Tony’s loaded the meowing, angry Jarvis into his car—the meowing, angry, _smelly_ Jarvis, because apparently the first signs of the medication’s effectiveness is feline flatulence—he leans against the driver’s door and whistles to her. She’s already halfway into her own vehicle, but she pauses to look at him. “Miss Potts, have I mentioned lately that you’re amazing?” 

His grin is enormous, full of justifiable relief, and Pepper can’t help herself: she laughs. “Tony, that wore off as an apology years ago,” she tells him, but she also smiles the whole way home.


	40. Showing What Matters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous requested: _I LOVE MPU. It is such a rich, beautifully characterized world, and also the rare, *rare* case where I find myself almost wanting to write fanfiction about someone's fanfiction! If you are still taking prompts, I'm dying for a scenario where Miles witnesses Bruce in full hardass-attorney mode. Whether it occurs in actual literal court, or figuratively as Bruce uses it to shut down some problem facing him/their family. It causes Miles to look at Bruce in a new light._

“Uh, who is that dude and what did he do with your dad?” Ganke asks, and Miles elbows him hard enough he grunts. 

They’re supposed to be doing this stupid career development thing for school, like a weird, amped-up version of _take your kid to work day_ , but right now, that seems pretty unimportant. Ganke returns to scribbling down notes—his mom works at the hospital pharmacy and isn’t allowed to bring other people back with her, so he’s pretending Bruce and Tony are his parents, too—but Miles just stares.

Because the first three hours of the day were spent watching Tony write appellate briefs, and that sucked.

But now, they’re in Judge Smithe’s courtroom, and Bruce is kind of—

Okay, he’s totally amazing.

Miles doesn’t understand the law behind the motion Bruce is arguing—it’s something about a tribal court in a different state trying to take the case over, which Bruce is completely against—but he recognizes just how passionate his dad is about it. So much so, that he only really realizes that his brain went to that place he avoids—you know, the d-word—after Bruce lifts his hands from the podium.

“I realize this state has next to no precedent on the good cause exception to transferring jurisdiction,” he’s saying, every word pushed forward by this sort of barely-contained _force_ Miles’s literally never seen from him before, “and, as Mister Tallman iterated and _re_ iterated in his motion, other states are split on the issue. But I do not, for one minute, think that the drafters of the Indian Child Welfare Act intended for parents to use it to get a second bite of the proverbial apple.” His fingers land on the sides of the podium pretty hard, gripping on. “The fact of the matter is that Miss White has spent three years doing _nothing_ toward reunification. And before Mister Tallman accuses me of exaggerating,” Bruce adds, holding up a hand before the other attorney jumps up out of his chair, “I want to remind the court that that it’s seen the three years social worker reports. It’s heard the three years of testimony about a mother who rarely attends visits, who hasn’t submitted to a drug test in more than eighteen months, whose idea of stable housing suitable for her children is a perpetual stream of couches—”

“Your honor,” the other attorney huffs, standing slowly. Miles suspects he’s about three hundred years old. He walked in with a cane and everything.

Judge Smithe nods and glances over at Bruce. “Tone it down, please, Doctor Banner.”

Bruce pulls in a sharp breath, almost like he stubbed his toe, but then nods. “ICWA is meant to protect the heritage of Native American children, and I understand that,” he continues, but his voice is rubber-band tight. “But it is this court’s job—this court’s _duty_ —to act in the best interests of these children regardless of their heritage, their skin color, their tribal affiliation, or their mother’s eleventh-hour decision to assert heritage she never once brought up before—”

“Your _honor_ ,” the other attorney says again. “Doctor Banner is once again—”

“No, no _objection_ ,” Bruce cuts in. He twists to stare at the old man, his eyes wide and kind of wild. Ganke drops his pencil because he’s so busy staring. “That’s exactly what your client is doing, and I’m not going to apologize for pointing that out. Because three times over the last thirty months—”

“Doctor Banner,” the judge says.

“—she swore up, down, left, right, and center that she had no tribal heritage, that we were—and I quote, since you weren’t her counsel at the time—‘profiling’ her as Native ‘because she was brown.’ And now, after these children are nearing an adoption by a family that loves them, she wants to undo her fraud on this court by waltzing in with a tribal attorney, tribal registration numbers, and—” 

“Enough, Doctor Banner!” Judge Smithe actually shouts, and Miles flinches. Next to him, Ganke bunches up his shoulders and leans back like he thinks the judge might throw something. Miles isn’t sure she won’t. Bruce stops in the middle of his sentence, mouth hanging open awkwardly, and then snaps his jaw shut. “You receive a lot of leeway in this courtroom, Doctor,” the judge presses once Bruce is quiet, and he drops his eyes to the podium. “Do not abuse that privilege for a soapbox.”

He nods, rolling his lips together. “Sorry, your honor.”

“Are you done, or do you have other, actual arguments?”

“I’m finished.” Miles tries not to frown as he watches Bruce gather up his notes and legal pad. He only realizes that he’s clutching the armrest between him and Ganke when Ganke elbows him. “Thank you,” Bruce says as he steps away, and he sounds like Bruce again.

Actually, he sounds a little like Bruce if Bruce’s foot got run over by a car or something.

The judge takes the motion “under advisement,” whatever that means, and stalks back behind her secure door as soon as the hearing’s over. Bruce and the guardian ad litem end up talking in hushed tones, so Miles grabs Ganke by the sleeve of the t-shirt and drags him out of the courtroom. Pepper’s waiting in the hallway, all pretty and polished, and she smiles at them. “Ready for lunch?”

“We get to have lunch with your dad’s hot friend?” Ganke asks. Miles purposely steps on his foot as they follow Pepper down the hall.

They eat with Natasha, Pepper, Maria, and Peggy, Ganke asking all the right questions to write his essay on career development (of course), but Miles keeps thinking about Bruce. He only finishes half his sandwich, but Ganke trades him for his huge chocolate cookie, and Miles definitely eats that. When they get back to the office, he sort of lies about all the cool crimes Clint handles—traffic crime’s actually really dumb, as far as Miles’s concerned—and sends him to talk to Clint and Darcy. It means he can creep into Bruce’s office through the half-closed door and, when Bruce doesn’t look up from his computer, knock on the side of his file cabinet.

Bruce kind of jumps, but then he smiles. Not a full smile, but softer. “Done with lunch already?” he asks, pushing back from the desk. 

Miles shrugs. “We were gone a whole hour,” he points out. Bruce checks his watch, frowning, and Miles scoots the rest of the way into the office. “Did the judge figure out what she wants to do about that case yet?”

“What— Oh, the one you just saw?” Bruce asks, and Miles nods. “No, that’ll— It’ll take a few weeks, probably. She’ll want to check our research and do some of her own to make sure the decision’s the right one.” He pauses to rub his face, and Miles thinks he looks almost embarrassed. “I’m sorry you saw that,” he says after a few seconds, which confirms Miles’s whole suspicion.

“Saw what?”

“That hearing. I— You probably know by now how I feel about parents who don’t care for their children,” he says, as though Miles needed more than three days with Bruce to figure that out. “And when they find loopholes in the system that they can exploit when they’re not trying to be better parents, I get frustrated.”

Frustrated isn’t the right word for it at all, but Miles grins a little. Ganke’d gushed about Bruce’s hearing at lunch a couple times, leading to Natasha and Pepper exchanging knowing looks, but Miles’d kept his mouth shut. Mostly because he hadn’t wanted them or Ganke to hear what he immediately says to Bruce:

“I think it was pretty cool.”

Bruce blinks at him. “What?”

“You only ever get fired up at Tony being crazy,” Miles says, and Bruce snorts a tiny laugh that touches the corners of his eyes. “I hear about how good a lawyer you are from Tony and everybody, but seeing it’s pretty cool.”

“Being scolded by a judge in open court isn’t exactly good lawyering.”

“No, but, I mean—” Miles hates how, sometimes, the words he wants escape out from between his fingers. He can think them easily, sure, but they’re sometimes really hard to pin down. “Getting angry shows that it matters,” he finally says. “And my mom always said you shouldn’t sit on the things that matter.”

Bruce smiles then, an actual Bruce smile that crinkles the lines around his eyes and reminds Miles that he’s really not all that young. He shakes his head. “Don’t ever say that where Tony can hear you,” he warns. “The last thing he needs is encouragement.”

“Encouragement for what?” Tony asks, popping his head into the office literally only a second later, and Miles laughs so hard that it actually hurts.


	41. Needless Worry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And again, a ficlet that both includes two prompts (for the price of one!) and went a different direction from what I'd planned.
> 
> anonymous requested: _so, a prompt for your consideration, Phil and Clint go on a double date, preferably with Steve and Bucky or Tony and Bruce._
> 
> anonymous requested: _Can we please have a story about Steve fanboying about his cool mentor Phil?_
> 
> Oh, Clint's insecurity, I missed you so.

“This is pretty sick and disgusting, right?” Clint asks.

Bucky grins. “Completely,” he says, and clinks his beer bottle against Clint’s.

It’s not really Bucky’s fault that their respective other halves totally have geek-boners for one another, but they’re all twenty-five minutes into dinner by now and it’s abundantly clear that the real date is between Phil and Steve. Almost since they sat down, the two’ve spent all their energy reminiscing about hilarious things that happened at the office back when Steve was an intern all those years ago.

You know, back when Bucky and Clint were both in college. Back when Dot existed only in the abstract and Phil—

Clint wonders who Phil slept with back in those days. At least, until he thinks about it too hard and almost chokes on a mouthful of beer. 

“What?” Bucky asks from across the table. Phil’s laughing, free and easy, and Clint’s almost jealous for a second that it’s Steve who’s coaxing the laughter out of him. He likes Steve a lot, don’t get him wrong, but it’s a little weird how much his boyfriend likes him.

Bucky kicks him under the table, and Clint jerks his head back away from Phil’s laugh lines. “What?” the other guy repeats. Clint shakes his head, waving off the whole almost-choking incident by nabbing another tortilla chip from the bowl. Suddenly, the whole _maybe Phil only slept with his right hand and dreams of Steve_ joke feels a lot less hilarious.

The double date, unsurprisingly, was Steve’s idea, cooked up at a group lunch a couple weeks back and then perfected by Phil, the king of planning and calendar management. And honestly, the idea’s not a horrible one in the abstract; the Mexican place sorta turned into Clint’s favorite after Wade introduced him to it, the beer’s super cold, and the company’s great. It’s just the whole giggling-schoolgirl thing that ruins the ambiance. 

Clint thinks he’s probably eaten his weight in salsa and chips at this point, too, since nobody’s really chatting with him or Bucky.

“Think they’d be into swinging?” Bucky asks suddenly. He’s scooping up the last of the extra-spicy salsa.

Clint snorts. “Think they’ll notice we’re even in the room?” he returns, and Bucky laughs.

At least, Bucky laughs for a half-second before his face turns crazy serious. He looks like a whole different person when his face drops like that, so stony and unfriendly that you’d think somebody brainwashed him, and Clint feels his mouth go dry. Next to him, Phil regales Steve with the story of some former intern who ended up disbarred, totally clueless to the fact that Bucky’s leaning all the way in. He scoots the chip basket and Clint’s beer out of the way, too, eliminating all potential for avoidance.

Bastard.

“Listen,” he says, still all drawn up and tight. Clint really hopes this isn’t the start of some idiotic Barnes joke. “I get it, okay? The first six weeks of his internship, Steve trotted home every day with stories about _Phil_.” He exhales the word, all dreamy-like, and Clint snorts at him. “It was bad. And I’m not a jealous guy—I mean, I’m married to a man who wouldn’t cheat on me unless there was a gun to Dot’s head, okay?—but it ticked me off bad.” He pauses, worrying his lips together. Clint thinks maybe it’s the first time he’s ever caught Bucky embarrassed about something. “I went full crazy husband a couple times. Showed up with lunch, picked him up from work, you name it.”

Clint tries to imagine a young, fresh-faced Bucky stalking Steve through parking lots and shit, and he’s gotta admit, it’s funny enough to start laughing. He shakes his head and drowns his amusement in beer for a second. 

His pause happens to coincide with a break in the Rogers-Coulson lovefest, too, and Phil glances over just long enough to flash Clint a glimmering smile. He’ll admit, it kinda helps. 

Not as much as hearing about Bucky the jealous husband, but a close second. 

“How’d you decide to stop worrying?” he asks once he’s reached over, squeezed Phil’s thigh, and released.

“Well, for one, I saw Phil for the first time,” Bucky deadpans, and Clint almost hurts himself laughing. Because yeah, Phil lights pretty much all his fires right in a row, but Bucky’s tastes clearly run a whole different direction. Bucky breaks into a grin and leans all the way back in the booth, spreading his arm along the top of it. His fingers brush purposely against Steve’s neck, and Steve blinks out of what he’s saying to glance over; soon as he catches Bucky’s tiny grin, he smiles back.

“What?” he asks, all wide-eyed and innocent. Clint immediately knows where Dot’s perfect sincerity comes from.

But after a beat, Bucky lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “Just talking about your crush on Phil.”

Clint barks a laugh and Phil immediately follows suit, leaving Steve to turn a little pink around the edges and elbow his husband. “I don’t have a crush.”

“ _Sure_ you don’t,” Bucky returns, and Steve leans over to kiss him, presumably proving how non-existent the crush is. It lingers, at least for a few seconds, and the he and Phil leap right back into conversation.

Bucky picks up his beer after that, draining the last couple swallows with lazy ease before setting the bottle back down. “And that,” he says simply, “is the rest of how I stopped worrying.”

Clint rolls his eyes. “Like it’s that easy,” he quickly retorts. But after he swigs from his own beer and steals another chip, he reaches over and rests his hand on Phil’s thigh—and right away, no hesitation, his guy reaches down and curls fingers over his.

Just like that, warm and wonderful as the first time they touched.

Turns out, double dates are a lot more fun when you actually listen to what your date’s saying and laugh along with him. Who knew?


	42. Five Times Wade Wilson Met Dorothea Rogers Barnes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous requested: _So, has Wade ever met Dot? Because I feel like if that has happened, we might need to hear that story._

**Year Two**

“Are you sure babies are allowed at this thing?” he asks. “This is classy. The booze is free. There’s no way babies are actually—” 

Bobby steps on his foot. Hard. Really hard, actually, hard enough that he bites back several swear words not necessarily appropriate for babies or adults. “First,” he says testily, because apparently he saves full-on pissy-pants mode for networking socials, “that child is at least two.”

“That child” is chubby and blonde and shoving cut-up strawberries in its mouth. He narrows his eyes in its direction in case it makes any quick moves.

“And second,” Bobby continues, “I think she belongs to someone from the District Attorney’s office. And if you ever want to get hired in criminal law, you need to learn to mingle and network. That means—”

“It’s looking at me!” he hisses, and ducks immediately behind Bobby.

Bobby sighs.

 

**Year Four**

“You’re a stranger,” the child at the buffet table says. Her plate consists entirely of strawberries and various pastries. He respects that. Solid choice, since strawberries are out of season and literally everything’s free. “I’m not allowed to talk to strangers.”

“Well, you’re a little girl,” he returns. “I’m not allowed to talk to little girls.”

She nods like this makes absolute sense, pauses, and then frowns at him. “Why not?” she asks. Her face is skeptical. Like, creepily-skeptical. Nate Summers skeptical, and on the spectrum of skepticism, that’s pretty fucking deep into the danger zone. 

Also, she’s apparently waiting for an answer. Uh, okay.

“Because,” he starts, and her tiny eyebrows pop up in curiosity, “their ‘sugar and spice and everything nice’ directly counteracts my ‘slugs and snails and puppy-dog tails,’ and I might implode.”

She tips her head to one side. “Where do you get puppy tails?” she asks, apparently immune to his flawless logic.

He discovers about twenty seconds later that the answer _I guess I cut them off of a bunch of puppies, I don’t know_ is the wrong answer.

Darcy never invites him to another Urban Ascent event again.

 

**Year Six**

“I will pay you for playing along,” Bucky Barnes hisses, and his tiny child cackles.

Oh, she’s feigning cuteness right now, sitting at the judge’s bench and wearing the judge’s robe, but he can sense the evil. It radiates off her. No matter how adorable Judge Smithe clearly thinks this whole thing is—she’s grinning, and, huh, is actually weirdly attractive when she grins, who knew?—he knows the truth. Small girl children exist only to plot his demise, and right now, Bucky’s small girl child is scoring in the ninety-ninth percentile of terrifying.

He knew, of course, that today was _take your child of either gender to work day_ , thanks to the sheer number of kids climbing around their office. Not kids belonging to legal aid, of course. No, the kid belong to the other people in the building. And since he already got an earful for stealing a Capri Sun out of the shared fridge downstairs, he definitely is not up for whatever Baby Barnes is planning.

“Baby Barnes sounds like a less-exciting Spice Girl,” he thinks aloud.

“What?” Bucky asks. Up on the bench, the judge shows her terrifying protégé how to turn the microphone system on and off.

“I meant, how much are you planning to pay me to be the guinea pig for your tiny child’s sadistic joke?” he corrects. The microphone only picks up _guinea pig_ and _sadist_ , leading to really unfortunately post traumatic client disorder flashbacks to Allan Crane, the lover of goats. 

Lover of goats sounds like a character from _Game of Thrones_. Maybe Targaryen cousin or something. He decides to keep that to himself.

“You’re not allowed to talk!” the small dictator atop the bench announces. She points a stubby finger across the courtroom, and only Bucky bothers to look appropriately chastened. Except then the girl switches her glare to him, he stares back at her, and it all devolves into a very awkward, very silent standoff.

“A twenty-dollar gift certificate to Chipotle,” Bucky offers.

“Done,” he replies. Bucky raises his eyebrows, apparently expecting something out of him and—

Oh.

Right.

He drops his eyes to the floor.

“I’m very sorry, your glorious honor,” he tells the not-exciting Spice Girl on the bench, and spends the next half-hour in the weirdest pretend hearing of his life.

 

**Year Eleven**

“Please tell me you are not hiding from that Girl Scout troop,” Nate says in his best annoyed voice.

“Then I will definitely not tell you that I am indeed hiding from that Girl Scout troop,” he returns, and follows really dangerously close to Nate’s back. So close, in fact, that he should be charged with following too closely. Well, except he’s a person and not a car. No, Clint, do not extend the law to include people walking into Safeway and avoiding Girl Scouts, that’s not—

Nate stops and starts to turn, which means he collides with Nate’s shoulder. He’s lucky to escape with his nose intact. “Are you going to explain why you are hiding from the Girl Scout troop?”

“You just said I’m not allowed to tell you whether or not I’m hiding from them at all,” he retorts. Nate’s eyes twitch in that way that promises either a glare or a smile, depending on what happens in the next three seconds. “If I can’t tell you I’m hiding, then I definitely can’t tell you _why_ I’m hiding. Are you sure you’re a lawyer? Because that’s basic deductive reasoning, and I’d _think_ —”

“Girls!” Nate calls all of a sudden, cleanly cutting off his very astute criticism. The glowing, dead eyes of ten Girl Scouts, all in little green vests under their winter coats, swivel over toward them. Nate steps forward while he tries to step back, but then Nate grabs him by the scarf and drags him along.

It’s like something out of _Silent Hill_ , all creepy and—

“Hey, don’t you know my dad?”

He glances through the collection of dead-eyed girls until he finds the one who talked, the blonde one with a name like Spot or Freckle. Something stupid like that. Last time he saw her, she wore pigtails and a fluffy skirt; now, she wears a sweater and looks older.

“Uh, yeah,” he answers, because technically, sure, he knows Rogers and Barnes. Or maybe they hyphenate. He’s never figured that out.

Speckle—no, that’s not it—holds up a box of cookies. “You like Thin Mints?”

“He _loves_ Thin Mints,” Nate says, all emphasis and evil grin. He’s pulling out his wallet and peeling off bills. Who needs groceries when Girl Scouts are readily available? 

Wait, that sounds like Nate’s buying the Girl Scouts.

Is that _possible_?

Later, when he’s burping up Thin Mints from eating two boxes in a row, he lies on the floor in the middle of the hallway and glares at Nate. “I hate you.”

“Please turn toward Bobby’s office before throwing up,” Nate replies, smiling.

 

**Year Twenty-Four**

“Oh god,” he says. His stomach drops all the way into his feet, then seeps out and into his shoes, and he swears he can feel them squelching when he curls his toes.

“What do you mean ‘oh god?’” his client demands, twisting to stare at him. His client qualifies as the jumpiest human person on the face of the planet. He suspects the meth. Meth’s supposed to do that to you, right? Jumpy, paranoid, lots of energy?

Suddenly, he understands why people on his college lacrosse team jokingly called him “Speed.” Huh. Here, he just thought they’d heard about that incident with Sarah Palmer his freshman—

“Wilson,” the chief assistant district attorney greets, and he snaps to his feet. He swears that their office keeps a special list of requirements for female chief assistants, because she reminds him of Maria Hill in like a hundred ways. Most of these revolve around her being tall, dark-haired, and scary. He swallows around the spike of active fear that threatens to climb up out of his gut and forces a smile. “I’ve been introducing our new interns around as they start,” she continues, unphased. “I’d like you to meet Dorothea Barnes.”

Dorothea sticks out her hand. “Hello.”

And he, totally maturely, responds by blurting, “We’ve met before.” She stares at him, a sure sign she probably doesn’t remember. “You probably don’t remember,” he continues, “but you wouldn’t talk to me when you were little. And played judge with me when your dad brought you to work. And—”

“You bought ten boxes of Thin Mints from us,” Dorothea says, grinning.

“No,” he informs her, “ _Nate_ bought ten boxes of Thin Mints from you. I only ate them and then threw up in a planter in the lobby of our office, super classily.”

She laughs then, her cracked-up joy as warm as her boss’s glare is ice cold. “You are awesome,” Dorothea decides, and reaches forward to grab his hand. “And it’s actually Dot, by the way.”

“Wade Wilson,” he replies, and grins right back at her.


	43. As It Should Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> asylumaniac requiested: _A Steve and Bucky chapter from Steves grandmothers point of view_

Dorothea Rogers is no idiot.

Oh, she supposes her grandson sometimes thinks she is, but she most certainly was not born yesterday. She stands in the kitchen, squinting at the recipe card for dinner—the words keep shrinking, much to her dismay—and idly wonders what sort of fool Steve takes her for. After all, it’s four in the afternoon on his break home from college, there are boots in her foyer, and an especially-suspicious t-shirt hangs from the bannister headed upstairs. 

She supposes she’s lucky that Steve’s not like Annabel’s grand-niece. That couch required steam-cleaning before Annabel invited them over after church again.

But the point certainly stands.

An hour later, Dorothea’s peeling potatoes for homemade au gratin—not her favorite, necessarily, but growing boys require a lot of starch and cheese, she’s told—when Steve wanders down the stairs. She recognizes his footsteps but continues working, flicking brown potato skin into the sink.

The footsteps stop abruptly in the doorway to the kitchen. “Uh, hey, grandma,” Steve greets. His voice sticks, gummy-sounding in the back of his throat. “I didn’t hear you come home.”

“I came home over an hour ago,” she replies. A cursory glance over her shoulder reveals he’s headed straight for the fridge—and also that he’s without a shirt. She stops to level a glance at him. “It’s on the bannister.”

He pauses for a single beat, and Dorothea’s forced to stand on her smile. “What’s on the bannister?” he asks, knowing full well the answer.

“Your shirt,” she replies, and returns to her peeling.

She knows without looking the range of expressions that cross Steve’s face in the next few seconds: embarrassment, shame, probably a touch of anguish— In short, everything you’d expect from a nineteen-year-old boy nearly caught with his pants down. And if she’s honest, he only avoided the “nearly” because she’d known about James’s leave and decided to visit the Safeway on the far end of town to allow them a bit of private time.

Extremely private time, from the sounds of—

“Part of the whole ‘you get up and grab water’ thing involves grabbing— Oh.” When Dorothea turns around, James is standing in the doorway to her kitchen. She can’t help the tiny, amused smile that presses at the corners of her lips when she catches sight of the boy: hair mussed and sticking up, his sleeveless undershirt clearly on inside-out, his khaki-green boxer shorts twisted. At the fridge, Steve’s entire face pinks up; in the doorway, James flushes a bright, true red. 

“We didn’t know you were home,” he says helplessly.

“Clearly not,” Dorothea replies. The amusement in her voice only causes Steve’s blush to deepen. “You boys get your water and go ‘relax,’” she says after enough time for awkward, silent staring’s passed. “We’re having chicken and potatoes tonight, and I bought a pie for dessert.”

James’s head pops up. “Pie?” he asks. “What kind of pie?”

“Bucky,” Steve grumbles.

“Cherry, of course,” Dorothea replies, and turns back to her peeling.

“You’re the _best_ ,” James declares, and hops across the kitchen to plant a kiss on her cheek. The kissing is new, starting right around the time Dorothea lent Steve the money to rent a hotel room for James’s last night home before he left for basic training, so she smiles and pats his arm. “Grab the water,” he instructs Steve, the next victim of his drive-by kissing.

He thunders up the stairs, and for a moment, the kitchen is very quiet. Steve opens the fridge, draws out a few bottles of water, then closes it behind him; Dorothea continues her peeling as though everything in her household is as it should be. She’s on a third potato when Steve comments, “You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?”

She glances over her shoulder at him. He’s still pink and clearly embarrassed, so she finally allows her smile to shine through. “The boy you love came home from the Army today,” she reminds him while the color climbs up his neck. “Of course I knew.”

He smiles at her, as shy and sweet as the twelve-year-old she comforted after they lost Sarah, and abandons the bottles on the counter to hug her. She drops the potato to squeeze him back, just for a moment, then pats him on the side and releases. “Go upstairs to your young man, Steve.”

“You sure you don’t need—”

“Oh, I always can use help in the kitchen,” she tells him, and he grins. “But I am _positive_ James needs you upstairs more.”

He blushes, she laughs, and before she knows it, he’s gone, water bottles in hand and thundering upstairs.

Everything in her household is most certainly as it should be.


	44. Foxes and Snakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> uofmdragon requested: _Clint and Phil are hosting a party for a birthday/Fourth of July BBQ/Thanksgiving Dinner/Event of your choice and they invite Barney, thinking he won't come, but he does. Reactions from Phil and Clint? Does Barney behave or does he embarrass himself? How do the other guests react?_
> 
> This didn't exactly fit the prompt, but it's easily one of my favorites I've written.
> 
> Also, this is hard canon. Because of reasons.

He knows it’s stupid to come, y’know? It’s like that story about the poisonous snake and the fox. Is it a snake? It’s something poison, and—

What? You’ve never heard that one? Figures. Well, here’s how it goes: there’s this fox and a snake or whatever, and they’ve gotta cross a raging river. Snakes can’t swim, so the fox offers to take the snake on his back. And there’s some kinda bargaining between the two of them, right, ‘cause snakes are pretty much the universal dick animal and the fox is real concerned he’s gonna get bit. And the snake keeps promising that, hey, he’s cool, he just wants across the river, let him hitch a ride.

The fox finally caves, and halfway across, the snake bites him. And the fox knows he’s toast but he’s also pissed as fuck. They had a deal and shit. So he asks the snake, _Hey, what the hell’s up with that, you assclown?_

And the snake answers, _It’s in my nature_. Even if it’s not a snake, if it’s a spider or a tree frog—hey, some of them are poison—it’s definitely that line. In his nature.

Standing out in the corner of Clint and Phil’s yard, sipping a beer, Barney feels his nature running through him like that river.

He’s just not sure if he’s the snake or the fox.

Here’s the thing: ever since Clint left the park and decided on the whole _messed up kid makes good_ routine, Barney can count on one hand the number of times his brother’s actually involved him in his life. Like, voluntarily. Barney never got a fucking invite to his graduations, college or law school. And maybe that’s fair, you know? Maybe nobody wants their burn-out older brother slouching his way around their big day. But up ‘til the whole thing with Jordan getting stabbed and that asshole lawyer who tried to fuck Clint over, Barney’d barely talked to the guy. Cashed his Christmas check, sure, but talking?

Bartons don’t really talk to each other. In the DNA, or something.

But then the asshole lawyer lost, and Phil called Barney up to watch Clint almost get his ass handed to him, and somehow, now, he’s here, standing around and drinking beer on a warm May evening. Barney thought he caught something about a birthday or some shit, but he’s not sure. Nobody’s really talked to him, except for Phil shaking his hand and Clint doing that wary thing like he’s not sold on hugging but definitely’s interested. Barney knows that expression like the back of his hand.

The back of his hand’s all scraped up from helping the Tracy brothers with some contracting something-or-other they picked up. A lot of cinderblock, a lot of rebar, and some cash under the table. 

Shit, why the fuck did he come?

Seriously, look at them. Look across the yard at the group of them. Foxes, every damn one, sleek and put-together like you’d expect from a bunch of lawyers. Clint’s laughing with that hot red-haired prosecutor and some guy in a shirt almost as wrinkled as Barney’s; the difference, Barney figures, is that _that_ guy picked up his shirt at Macy’s or something, not on a brown-bag day at the Habitat for Humanity store. Phil’s chatting up some dark-haired chick with killer legs and a sharky smile, grinning in a way that makes him kinda attractive. 

Not in a gay way. Hell no. But in that way where, maybe, Barney can sorta see why his brother’s shacked up with a thin-haired nerd like Phil Coulson.

The rest of the office’s there too, plus some cute little blonde kid, some scrawny black boy, and the big blond guy’s baby, and it’s all— It’s like something outta fucking _Desperate Housewives_ , all disgustingly perfect.

He’s the snake. It’s in his nature to be the snake. No way out.

He swigs his beer.

His phone chimes, but he knows it’s just Ally, bitching about something new, so he ignores it to watch them all for a second longer. Clint’s one friend with the flashy watch laughs loud and hard, then the big blond one joins in, and Barney wishes for a second he could jump in on the joke. But there aren’t jokes for guys like him, not unless he’s the butt of them. 

Really, again:

Why the _fuck_ did he come?

He finishes off his beer in a couple big gulps that aren’t exactly polite, belches into his arm just in case somebody overhears, and starts across the yard. Nobody’s really noticed him, the ghost skulking around or whatever, so he tosses his bottle into the recycle bin. For a second, one of the blonde girl’s dads squints at him, and he feels his whole body tense up. They’re not lawyers here, he tries to convince himself, but yeah. They are.

They’re lawyers, and they all look at him the same way.

Probably deserves that, too. 

He turns away from them and lets himself out the side gate instead of slipping through the group on the patio and trying to walk through the house. Trey’s not picking up when he calls, so he ends up on the phone with Ally, and _man_ does she bitch him out before finally agreeing to climb in the damn car and head his way. She grumbles a whole bunch at the address too, but he didn’t exactly pick this shit, okay?

And maybe that’s why he’s sitting on the curb outside a perfect fucking house and a stupid suburban life when Clint asks, “Are you leaving?”

He’s in jeans and a dark blue t-shirt that probably cost more than half the clothes Barney owns, including the shit he saves for meeting with his P.O., so he shrugs. “Ally’s gonna come,” he says, ‘cause it’s not like he can deny it at this point. “She’s pissed at me anyway, says I should be spending time, so I figure—”

“And you weren’t going to say anything?” Clint cuts him off. 

He rolls his eyes. “You were gonna notice?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Probably ‘cause one of the gay dads told you I was coming out here to break into cars.” Barney looks back at the street when he says it. He’s not in the mood for Clint’s face. He’s also not in the mood to be empty-handed, so he digs out a smoke and lights it. Tobacco, not anything stronger. He’s not stupid, and Ally won’t let him smoke it around her anymore, anyway. 

He’s on his second long drag when Clint plops down next to him. He reaches over, and Barney thinks he’s gonna smack the cigarette away; instead, he steals a drag of his own and hands it back. Clint’s not smoked since way back in high school, and it’s weird to watch the slow stream of smoke slip out from between his lips.

At least, ‘til he coughs. Barney laughs. “Fuckin’ idiot.”

“I haven’t smoked for a couple decades, gimme a break.”

“Idiots don’t get breaks,” Barney retorts, and Clint elbows him pretty hard in the side.

They sit there for a long time, the smoke curling off the end of Barney’s cigarette, before Clint says, “I actually wanted you to come, you know. Pretty sure you won’t believe me, and this’ll turn into a fight, but—”

“Nah, I know,” Barney says. Thing is, he means it, not that he can tell Clint that. No, instead he sucks another drag off the smoke and lets the bitterness play around on his tongue for a while. “It’s like the snake and the fox.”

“The what?”

He waves a hand. “It’s like mixing things that don’t go together,” he says instead, ‘cause maybe the story’s about a spider, after all. “On their own, they’re pretty okay. They stick with their kind, and it works. You start shoving them together, and that’s when everything goes to shit.”

There’s no use looking over at Clint; Barney can feel his frown. “You’re not less than them because you’re different,” he says after a couple seconds, and Barney fucking snorts at him. “You’re not. It’s not oil and water, it—”

“You shake up Italian dressing ‘cause the two things don’t mix good, Clint,” Barney reminds him. When he glances over, Clint’s rolling his lips together, all clammed up. “You fixed your life up. I’m cool with that.”

Clint nods, kinda, but then looks down at his hands. His fingers are flexing, nervous. Always had nervous hands, that kid. “I don’t wanna go back to how things were before Jordan,” he says after a couple seconds. “I at least wanna have my brother around occasionally.”

“I showed up to your damn party, didn’t I?” Barney asks, knocking their elbows together. He leaves out the part about how he’s got no fucking idea _why_. Clint snorts at him, so he elbows him harder. “Just stop inviting me to lawyer shit. Text me and I’ll let you buy me a burger. Stuff that’s— Y’know.”

He’s not sure whether the _just us_ part of all that translates, but before he can wait and see, there’s a beat-up old Lincoln dragging its ass down the street. “Ally,” he says, and stubs out the cigarette before he stands. She sees that, he won’t hear the end of it.

“Right,” Clint replies, and stands up with him. Barney’s suddenly not too sure he’s ever told Clint about Ally. Maybe some other time. “I’ll text you,” he blurts out while Barney’s jogging toward the car.

He stops in the middle of the street and looks back at his brother. Messed up kid made good, maybe, but around the edges, Barney thinks he can see the snake. 

Maybe you can never transform the whole way. Maybe there’s always bits of your nature that stick around.

“Yeah, text,” he calls back, and then ducks away before Clint says anything else.


	45. Fathers and Sons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ladykiki requested: _Because I am rereading Permanency, and Bruce's suggestion caught my fancy: Miles asks Tony about his father._

“For school,” Tony repeats, just to make sure he heard properly.

“Yeah,” Miles says. He’s sitting on the floor at Bruce’s coffee table, chin on his hand like some sort of skinny black version of _The Thinker_. Hey, that’s not racist, that’s a statement of his kid’s ethnicity, okay? Tony, meanwhile, is trying to annotate some cases he wants to use for a really obscure appeal, but Miles is staring at him.

Curious and big-eyed.

He checks his watch. It’s an hour until Bruce returns from class. Shit.

“You sure you don’t wanna ask Bruce?” he asks, twirling his pen between his fingers. “You want a dramatic family story, the big guy’s where it’s at, whereas me—”

“Bruce told me about his dad already,” Miles interrupts, annoyed. Seriously, he’s pulling the sulky kid face and everything. Tony considers pointing out that there’s huge portions of the Brian Banner story that Miles won’t hear for another couple years, but he’d rather his husband speak to him in the morning. “We’re supposed to do an interview and then write it up, and since I don’t have siblings or any aunts or uncles around—”

“Steve!” Tony snaps his fingers and kicks his legs off the couch. “We’ll call Steve, he’ll—”

“Not my uncle,” Miles cuts in.

“And technically, I’m not your father yet, so let’s not pick apart the details on this whole arrangement, all right?” For a second, he thinks he’s won, but then the annoyed kid face wavers. It catches, all soft around the edges, and he sighs. The family therapist told them to watch out for emotional vulnerability. 

Tony finally understands what she meant. 

“Okay,” he says in what he’s pretty sure is the last second before Miles folds in on himself, and Miles jerks his head up to blink at him. Tony rubs his face with his hand. “Okay, sure, you wanna hear about my dad? I’ll tell you everything there is to know about my dad. Where do we start?”

The interview, it turns out, is technically about both parents—all the options are, because part of the point of the assignment is picking out bias (kind of fancy for a sixth-grade English class if you ask Tony)—but Tony’s memories of his mom are pretty few and far between, dulled by time and emotional scar tissue. Everybody thinks of Bruce as the big cuddly orphan, sure, but they forget that Tony lost his mom in elementary school, too.

Granted, at the hands of a drunk driver who jumped the double yellow, but point stands.

His dad, however, is a whole different story.

“You gotta understand,” he’s explaining a good half-hour later, his elbows on his knees as he leans forward on the couch, “the man had this _brain_ you couldn’t pin down. Larger-than-life, full of ideas . . . Y’know, sometimes, I thought maybe he could see into the future, imagine how life’d be now even though it was twenty-five, thirty years ago and shit like Priuses and smart phones hardly qualified as twinkles in Steve Jobs’s eye.” Miles’s pencil sits abandoned on his notepad, and he’s staring up at Tony. Tony’s not used to _that_ look yet, that bewildered, awed, wonderful look that means his kid thinks he’s something special, but somehow, it spurs him forward. “But brilliance in engineering doesn’t mean brilliance in parenting, and that’s where the whole thing kind of fell apart.”

Miles frowns at him. “He was a bad dad?” he asks. It’s totally sincere, and worried enough to break your heart in two places. 

Tony drags his fingers through his hair. “No,” he answers, but Miles’s frown deepens. He lets out a huff of breath and flops back onto the couch. “Okay, here’s an example: Ganke.”

“Ganke?”

“Ganke. Kid’s bright, right? Brightest bulb in the box, probably gonna rule the world from a Lego replica of the Iron Throne one of these days, all that?” Miles laughs, and Tony flashes him a grin. “Exactly. But how many friends—I mean real, tight like you and him, capital-F _friends_ —does he have?”

Miles thinks about it for a second. The greatest gift in the known universe, far as Tony’s concerned, is having a kid who actually sits down and thinks about the big questions instead of blurting out crazy things. Sorry, Dot, but Miles wins this one, hands down. 

Miles also answers, “Maybe only me.”

“Right,” Tony informs him, and levels a finger in his direction. “See, you get people with crazy-big brains that never stop chugging along, and you find out pretty quick that they’re not good at a lot of _human_ stuff. Like making friends, for one. Also, parenting.” Miles starts to open his mouth, but Tony holds up a hand. “He never hit me, he never locked me in the basement and threw away the key, and even after my mom died and the drinking amped up, he never— Let’s just say no social workers were gonna roll up because of his parental insufficiencies, okay? He just always made me feel a little . . . ”

He stops then, words caught for just for a second, and looks down at Miles. Miles, a kid who’s curious, patient, and thoughtful to a fault. Miles, a kid whose laugh can fill any room in the house, who pounds doughnuts like there’s no tomorrow, and who sometimes scoops up Jarvis and talks to him like he’s a little kid instead of a cat. Miles, a kid who’ll be his son soon, his actual, _legal_ son—and who sometimes reminds Tony so much of Bruce that it physically hurts.

He wets his lips. Miles keeps watching.

“I spent a lot of time feeling like I wasn’t good enough,” he finally says, “and that’s a pretty hard bell to un-ring.”

They finish up the last couple interview questions around the time Tony needs to hustle Miles up the stairs and into bed, complete with all the usual grousing about teeth-brushing and how the bed at Tony’s is technically softer. “One month,” Tony reminds him, and then lightly nudges him into the bathroom with his foot. Miles laughs and tries to dodge, forcing Tony to shoo him along a second time. “Seriously,” he complains in between preteen grins and wriggles, “you will be the primary factor in a divorce if you keep avoiding your bedtime.”

Miles only laughs harder.

Bruce’s downstairs and fiddling with the kettle when Tony finally flicks off the lights in Miles’s room. He’s readying the first in the long line of protracted, ridiculous goodnights, when Miles blurts, “Hey, Tony?”

It’s a break from their usual Wednesday night vaudeville act, so Tony snaps his mouth shut. “Yeah?”

“I think you’re a lot better parent than your dad was.”

Miles is the greatest gift in the known universe, but the second greatest might just be that Tony finds his voice enough to say, “Thanks, kid,” before he heads downstairs to Bruce.


	46. Idle Threats and Other Regular Office Occurrences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> aureliaophelia requested: _I would love Clint and Darcy colluding with one another to make mischief. Maybe with Fury as the target if it's light-hearted mischief, but visit it upon Loki if it's a little mean. Thank you and happy anniversary!_
> 
> Part of the fun with the ficlets has been getting to try different methods and styles of storytelling. This is no exception.
> 
> The initials are to indicate who wrote (in capital letters) and who proofread and approved (in lowercase) the documents in question. But you people are smart, you already knew that.

**Official Memo  
Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office  
December 10, 2012**

Whoever hung the mistletoe from the ceiling tile between the men’s and women’s restroom has exactly 24 hours to remove it. It is a sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen no matter how happy Stark is in his current relationship.

N.F. / vp

 

**Official Memo  
Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office  
January 4, 2013**

The “Happy New Year” confetti in the freezer is not funny. The culprit will pay for the additional janitorial services required for its removal out of his or her paycheck.

N.F. / vp

 

**Official Memo  
Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office  
January 23, 2013**

It has recently come to my attention that a few individuals in this office are regularly referring to Detective James Howlett as “Detective McGruff from _Dog Cops_.” Although I know Detective Howlett can be challenging to work with, please remember the following two things.

1\. It is important for this office to maintain a healthy working relationship with all local law enforcement and investigative agencies, including but not limited to the city police, the Suffolk County Sheriff’s department, our state and county alphabet agencies, and Suffolk County Child Services. Bullying and name-calling undermines this goal.

2\. Extensive online research indicates that _Dog Cops_ is not in fact a real thing. 

N.F. / vp

 

**Official Memo  
Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office  
February 13, 2013**

Intentionally hitting another human being with a suction cup arrow constitutes a criminal battery under the laws of this state. 

N.F. / vp

 

**Official Memo  
Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office  
February 13, 2013, supplemental**

As Cupid is fictional and cannot be prosecuted, we will be charging the person actually responsible for the arrow-shooting.

N.F. / vp

 

**Official Memo  
Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office  
March 1, 2013**

Whoever convinced two of the interns that (1) this is a leap year and (2) office policy states that “leap day” is a paid day off even for interns will be responsible for covering any outstanding assignments said interns miss.

N.F. / vp

 

**Official Memo  
Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office  
March 11, 2013**

Rickrolling is never funny.

N.F. / vp

 

**Official Memo  
Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office  
March 18, 2013**

Look at me! I’m Nick Fury! I’m all tough with my regularly-posted, vaguely-threatening official memos! Look at my eye patch! I’m like a pirate, but tougherQ

N.F. / vp

 

**Official Memo  
Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office  
March 18, 2013, supplemental**

Please disregard the previous memo. It was a forgery, and the forgers will be dealt with promptly.

N.F. / vp

 

**Official Memo  
Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office  
March 19, 2013**

To whom it may concern:

Darcy and I would like to sincerely apologize for the last few months of pranks. As such, we will be buying drinks at the next group outing. If that occurs while Thor and Jane are out due to the arrival of the baby, we will pay for them when they come back.

Carrying out the mission of this office is important to us. We did not mean to undermine it. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,  
Clint Barton & Darcy Lewis

CFB / dl

 

**Official Memo  
Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office  
June 7, 2013**

Whoever moved Jane’s post-it note from her containers to the creamer bottle will be responsible for providing creamer to this office for the next month. Barton and Lewis, I’m looking at you.

N.F. / vp

 

**Official Memo  
Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office  
June 7, 2013, supplemental**

Upon speaking to Ms. Foster, I would ask that the prior memo be disregarded.

On an unrelated note, the liquid creamer is now very clearly labeled.

N.F. / vp


	47. The Bottom Left-Hand Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No one requested this.
> 
> Instead, I attempted to fill a prompt about Tony's intelligence, misremembered the actual substance of the prompt, and wrote this. Which I will post as a mulligan, because I really like it, but wow, wordbutler. Wow, you should be asleep right now.

“Bottom left-hand corner’s a seven,” Bruce Banner says.

Tony Stark’s worked at the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office for six weeks now, and in that time, he’s learned about a hundred important facts about his coworkers. Granted, most of them involve how best to avoid Maria Hill in the hallway, which coffee mug Phil Coulson considers “his,” and how to keep Nick Fury’s one-eyed gaze of doom from burning a hole in the back of his head, but hey, life skills.

None of these things involve Bruce Banner.

None of these things involve Bruce Banner because, as far as Tony’s concerned, Banner’s unreadable. Banner’s an enigma wrapped in a mystery, a secretive pig-in-a-blanket (where the secret’s the tiny weenie and the mystery’s the crescent roll), a ghost in the nice office with the slightly bigger window. He keeps to himself, he smiles quietly in the hall, and he definitely never rocks the boat.

Which totally doesn’t explain why right now, ten minutes before the weekly staff meeting, he’s standing over Tony’s shoulder and squinting at—

Oh. Right.

Tony shoves the demon Sudoku from hell over toward the chair next to him. “I am disavowing knowledge of the Suffolk County Tribune’s daily puzzle until they drop back down to the three-stars-or-fewer difficulty level,” he says in completely appropriate disgust. “You want it? Here, I’ll even throw in a pen. Black, blue, or the sparkly red gel pen I will later pretend you bought yourself along with a set of Lisa Frank stickers?”

Banner chuckles. It’s a warm sound, but muffled, like he’s not used to letting laughter tumble up out of his chest. “Black’s fine,” he says, and settles down into the next chair over. Tony grabs the rest of his newspaper, determined to flip over to the movie reviews or something equally mind-numbing, but—

“You’re kidding,” he blurts.

“Hmm?”

“You. You’re just filling in numbers at random. There’s no way you’re— _Really_?” And seriously, as Tony watches, Banner blithely completes both a column _and_ a square of nine by filling in a messy, jagged number four. 

When the other man glances up, it’s over the rims of his glasses. He’s suddenly incredibly professorial and, if Tony’s honest, not entirely unpleasant to look at. Also, he approves of the fact that Banner never wears ties unless he’s about ten seconds from a court appearance, preferring instead the “two open buttons and a glimpse of clavicle” look.

But that’s neither here nor there, now is it?

“These puzzles are just patterns,” Banner explains, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “Combining process of elimination and limited number of potential numeral placements, you can—”

“Eliminate the impossible so whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” Banner hides a little half smile by sipping his coffee; Tony leans back in his chair. All the way back, too, enough that the front two legs hop up off the carpet. Fury really needs to invest in some swivel chairs for the conference room. “C’mon, then, Sherlock. What’s your secret? ‘Cause there’s no way you memorized all the possible Sudoku patterns—unless you’re really as smart as everybody keeps saying.”

He thinks that the other guy flushes a little at that. “I don’t know where you heard that,” he replies after a beat, “but I wouldn’t necessarily trust it.”

“Really?” Tony demands, and Banner ducks his head back to the puzzle. “I’ve noticed the ‘Doctor’ in front of your name on your nameplate. Physics, right? And I’m pretty sure somebody said you went to one of the big four Chicago law schools. UC? Northwestern?”

He’s sure of the flush, this time. “DePaul, but—”

Tony snaps fingers at him. “Family law program, should’ve guessed.”

“Actually, I mostly took classes with an emphasis in public interest, but, uh, thanks.” But even with the color standing out on his neck and on the tips of his ears—Tony likes that, he likes really smart lawyers who still cling onto the shreds of their humility—he glances up and then never looks away from Tony. He sits there, Tony sits there, and they just kind of watch one another.

It’s at least twenty or thirty seconds later, maybe longer, when Hill and Coulson sweep into the room, arguing like old marrieds and tossing annoyed hand gestures at one another. For his first week, Tony’d assumed that Hill’s wedding band was Coulson’s doing, but then he’d both heard her bitch about her husband using his name (Mark), and realized that Coulson bats for a very different team (and likely strikes out thanks to his frankly appalling level of _dull_ ).

Of course, neither of those things stop him from commenting, “Are you handing out earplugs before the make-up sex this time or do I need to blast more B-Town?”

Coulson actually stops in the middle of a sentence to stare over at the table. “B-Town?”

“He means Beyoncé,” Hill informs him, and then jumps right back into the argument.

There’s a soft snort of breath from the chair next to him, and when Tony turns to glance over at Banner, he’s smiling. Oh, sure, he’s staring at the stupid puzzle, his head ducked and face tipped away, but Tony can tell. He can tell, and maybe because of it, he smiles right back.

After the staff meeting and a quick post-meeting bathroom break, Tony walks into his office to find something lying in the middle of his desk. He turns it around with two fingers—not that he needs to, because he’d recognize that stupid five-star Sudoku anywhere.

At the bottom, this time in a gel pen stolen off Tony’s desk, a hastily-scrawled note reads, _Maybe next time, I can show you how to finish one of these. Working from a one-star difficulty up, of course._

For the first time in what feels like his six weeks at the office, Tony actually laughs.

And later, he leaves a post-it on Banner’s office door that simply says, _you’re on_.


	48. Matches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mata requested a story involving Loki dating, but apparently tumblr ate the prompt. I originally planned to demure, but then this thought occurred to me. This is now another of my favorites.
> 
> And, because it's our new favorite phrase, this is hard canon.

“Well,” says Elizabeth, drawing out the word much in the same manner she drew out the insufferable pink heart over the _i_ in her name, “I like normal stuff, I guess. You know, running, movies, reading—”

“What do you read?” he asks, politely as he’s able. Across the bar, he can feel his brother’s insufferable smile glowing through the crowd. This, he thinks, is his penance for the last thirty-two years of less-than-white lies. Also, he’s fairly certain his brother obtained his entry to the event on false pretenses, given that he is most certainly not—

“—and _Harry Potter_!” Elizabeth chirps.

He snaps back into the conversation with a jolt of pain akin to whiplash. “Oh, tell me more,” he deadpans, and then subtly crosses her off his list.

 

“You look like a serial killer,” accuses Megan, crossing her arms and drawing attention to, well, everything she offers. It is not a bountiful feast, one might say. “Are you sure you’re not a serial killer?”

He lifts his drink. “I’m an attorney, actually.”

“That’s even worse,” she returns, and proceeds to spend their five minutes in abject silence.

 

“And this is Scotty,” enthuses Kaleena, flipping through a series of pictures which feature a morbidly obese ginger cat. In one, he’s lying on his back, feet in the air. “He’s not as well-behaved as Sulu, but I don’t think many cats are.”

Her laugh is like nails on a chalkboard. He contemplates ordering another drink.

“What about you? Any pets?” Kaleena leans an elbow on the table expectantly, grinning at the inevitable eye contact. She’s not entirely unattractive, even if her black pants are thoroughly coated in cat hair.

He smiles politely. “None presently,” he admits with a small shrug, “but I grew up on a farm in rural Wisconsin.”

Kaleena blinks before lighting up like the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. “With piggies?” she demands, bouncing like a small child.

“No,” he replies, and the conversation only devolves from there.

 

“My sister _always_ drags me to things like this,” complains Alicia, gesturing violently with her martini glass. It’s both nearly full and quite obviously not her first, and a fair amount sloshes out over the edge and onto the table. She stares at the wet spot forlornly, then shrugs. “She’s the pretty one, you know? Tall, blonde, friendly, with enormous—”

“Personality?” he asks blandly. She cackles, clearly overwhelmed by his breath-taking humor, and downs her drink in three greedy swallows.

Across the bar, his brother continues to smile. 

“I know the type,” he says tightly, and orders himself a second drink.

 

“The three weeks in Spain were _ridiculous_!” announces Holly, laughing with a warmth he’s not entirely familiar with at events such as these. Her loose, looping curls cascade over her shoulder as she shakes her head, and for once, he’s absolutely captivated. “I swear, if my parents wouldn’t’ve freaked out, I would’ve stayed over there. Amazing food, amazing architecture, amazing _people_?” She heaves a sigh. “It was heaven!”

“And to think, the most exotic place I’ve ever visited is Sweden,” he returns. 

Holly abandons her drink to stare at him. “Sweden?”

“Mmm, unfortunately, yes.” He spins his glass idly with two fingers, his eyes drifting from the perfect curve of her neck to the twinkle in her eyes. “My parents still have relatives outside of Umeå, in the north. We went every few years, growing up.”

“ _God_ ,” she exhales, the word nearly overwhelmed by wonder. “Sweden’s been on my bucket list for, like, a decade. I mean, sure, I covered all the typical hotspots when I traveled abroad—Paris, London, Amsterdam, a couple places in Germany, a weekend in Rome—but I always wanted to spend some time in Scandinavia.” She rests her chin in her hand and dazzles him with another smile. “I wish—”

Said wish is interrupted, however, by her ringing cell phone, and she swears under her breath before excusing herself to fumble around in her bag. He smiles and sips his drink, far too taken with her to be bothered.

At least, until she swears a second time and plasters a hand to her forehead. “I hate to do this to you,” she says quickly, casting a rather frantic glance across the table, “but it’s the babysitter. The girls’ve been fighting the flu all week, and I’m _sure_ —” 

“Girls?” he asks without thinking. Holly presses her lips into a thin, tight line. “You have children?”

She waits what he considers several beats too long before answering, “Just my girls and their baby brother.” Her eyes drop to his hand, which is clenched almost painfully around his glass. She heaves a sigh. “Come on, who in their thirties doesn’t have at least one kid already?”

“I can think of a few people,” he answers, and watches as she rolls her eyes before answering the call.

 

“Uh, what kind of name is _that_?” demands—

“What kind of name is yours?” he retorts, and she storms away toward the bar. 

 

 

“What’d you think of my sister Alicia?” asks Connie, beaming at him from ear-to-ear. She is, indeed, very pretty, and endowed with truly remarkable “personality.” She shows off said “personality” with a low-cut, v-neck top and a pendant necklace that nearly disappears between her—

Well.

“She was nice enough,” he replies, shrugging slightly.

“Oh, no,” Connie presses. She forward on the table. “I did not pay her entrance fee into this mess to hear another set of guys equivocate on what she’s like. Third time needs to be the charm.” She reaches into her pocket, and before he can register what’s happened, she deposits a frankly enormous diamond engagement ring in the center of the table. “See this?” she demands. “This is mine. I’m coupled-up and happy like that. But the only way I’m ever going to get Alicia to stop living in our parents’ basement is to figure out what’s _wrong_ with her. So I’m going to ask about your date, and you’re going to answer. Understood?”

He considers her offer for a few long seconds before answering, “I could find you quite attractive if you weren’t engaged.”

“I’m not the one you need to worry about, right now,” Connie returns curtly, and begins her interrogation. 

 

 

“Okay, _no_ ,” declares Sif, planting her hands on the table to stand.

The woman responsible for the timing their five-minute conversations rings her tiny bell, and for a moment, he’s convinced that Sif will rise from her chair and storm out of the bar. He watches her weigh the options, witnesses each possible decision as it flickers across her face, and then, finally, sees her shoulders relax. 

She still perches on the edge of her seat like an animal on alert, however, ready to seek safety at a moment’s notice.

He shouldn’t smile, so he focuses on the condensation sliding down the side of his glass. “I was unaware you enjoyed these—”

“Cattle calls?” she interrupts, and he feels the corners of his lips tip up. When he glances across the table, she sighs. “Brunnhilde was supposed to get into town tonight, but her flight was canceled. She thought it’d be fun to ‘go out on the town’ and ‘meet people.’”

Her liberal application of finger quotes causes him to snort the barest hint of a laugh. “Yes, well,” he replies, nodding across the bar to where his brother is now fiddling idly with his phone, “it appears we’ve each been bested by overzealous blonds, tonight.”

Sif twists to follow his gaze, then scowls. Fine lines that he can’t remember noticing find the corners of her eyes. “Does his fiancée know he’s here?” 

“Sadly, I suspect she helped orchestrate this Orwellian nightmare.”

“Orwellian?”

“Haven’t you noticed our speed-dating overlord? She’s probably investigating your Facebook profile on her iPad as we speak.”

Sif laughs then, nearly as easily as he remembers from their younger years, and shakes her head. “You are still an enormous asshole,” she informs him.

“And I still accept the compliment,” he returns, and smiles. 

 

 

“That was not entirely unpleasant, was it?” needles Thor, clasping him on the shoulder. The night is cool without being cold, a crisp early-spring evening with the scent of rain in the air. He considers shrugging off his brother’s oppressive grip, but he’s entirely too focused on the flimsy piece of cardstock listing his potential matches. “I saw you laughing! It made for a good change.”

He glances over at his brother. “Has it occurred to you I was laughing at rather than with them?”

Thor’s own laugh is a boom in the night, an unmistakable clap of human thunder. “I’m sure at least one person wanted your number as badly as you wanted hers,” he declares, reaching for the card. 

He steps away and, wordlessly, tears the card in half.

“Loki,” Thor chides. When Loki glances over his shoulder, his brother is frozen in the parking lot, hands on his hips. Loki resists the urge to roll his eyes. “You need to spend less time focused on your career, and more time focused on—”

“The only woman who left me on her list is named Holly and is the mother of three small children,” he retorts. He tears the card a second time, a third, and then again. “And as well-intentioned as I am sure your match-making attempts are, I think we can both agree that I would make a less-than-compelling stepparent.”

Thor opens his mouth, to which Loki raises both eyebrows. They stand six feet apart, staring one another down, before Thor finally sighs. “You would be a terrifying stepfather,” he agrees, and resumes walking.

“Says the man about to be a parent himself,” Loki returns, and shoves the torn card in his pocket without any further thought to the second name on it.

At least, for tonight.


	49. The Yearly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous requested: _ask #2: also, pretty much anything about wade would be great. i'm full of questions (i kinda want to ask for a trivia night, or his time at school, or his bout with cancer, etc etc) but i don't want to interfere with AI &OD so... maybe something about his first foray into his favourite pub, possibly with one of his clients?_
> 
> I don't actually know how persistent exams for things like cancer work, or if you do have yearly checkups, so please forgive my lack of medical know-how. (I just know that lots of people have yearly exams for their persistent or possibly-persistent conditions, so I extrapolated.)
> 
> Also, the law Wade rambles about at one point needs no explanation. It's not meant to do anything but be a Wade-ramble.

**2009**

“Fun fact,” Wade greets Dr. Cho as she walks into the exam room, his legs dangling from the stupid table. Why are exam tables so tall, anyway? They assume everybody’s that super tall Chinese guy who played in the NBA for a while, with legs that stretch on into eternity. Wade’s not that crazy-tall. He’s tall, but even his legs look shrimpy and stubby when he sits on an exam table.

Dr. Cho raises her eyebrows. “You had a fact?” she asks.

“Oh, yeah, right.” He always loses his train of thought at these things. It’s like watching ice break in a pond: the thought lands, heavy, but his brain fractures in a thousand different direction. “Having only one ball is called monorchism.”

He watches for a second as the doctor purses her lips in a really thin, tight line. He knows that line. It’s her professionalism line, the one she whips out when she’s trying really hard not to break into a smile. Doctors who’re meant to keep an eye on potential future cancer eating away at your soft bits, they don’t grin a whole lot. Probably something about the “cancer doctor” thing.

“You’ve heard that one,” Wade says once the almost-smile reaches her eyes.

“Just a few times, yes,” she admits, and closes the door.

 

**2010**

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Wade informs Dr. Cho as she slides the exam room door shut behind her. She’s wearing incredibly boring shoes. She’s sort of cute—put your Judgy McJudgerson expression away there, champ, she’s married and he’s not that kind of asshole—but the shoes, man, they’re unfortunate. Of course, he’s not one to talk. He’s wearing flip-flops, because it’s July and he’d rather his whole body not melt into a puddle of sweat and disgustingness. 

Dr. Cho sets down her chart. “Who says this isn’t how I met my husband?” she asks.

He thinks about it, starts to grin, then thinks about it again. Her expression’s blank, totally deadpan, and she starts moving toward the blood pressure cuff like nothing’s out of the ordinary. He nods to himself, just the once, and allows the grin to win out. “That how you wooed him? Called him back to play doctor for a while? One-on-one care and treatment?”

She releases a tiny sound that, in some cultures, might be a laugh. “I can’t tell you all my secrets,” she warns.

“Doctor-patient confidentiality,” Wade replies. She stops fastening the cuff on him and raises his eyebrows. He shrugs. “Hey, okay, so that’s not actually how it works, at least in a legal sense,” he continues innocently (or at least, he thinks maybe it could be construed as innocent to a complete stranger with no understanding of human vocal inflection), “but I won’t tell if you won’t.”

“I am terrified you’re going to be a lawyer,” she tells him, and puts on her stethoscope.

 

**2011**

“So, the thing about merchants,” Wade explains to Dr. Cho as she feels under his arms. Her fingers are cold. Her fingers always feel like she’s kept them in an icebox for the last hour before coming into see him. He probably shouldn’t complain—cold at least makes the whole thing less ticklish and uncomfortable—but his nipples stand out like diamonds and that’s just awkward.

Dr. Cho tips her head to glance at him. “Merchants?” she asks.

“People in business. Well, most the time. In certain parts of the Uniform Commercial Code, it’s limited to people who deal in goods of that kind, but a lot of times those’re called ‘merchants in the ordinary course of business,’ and _their_ rules only really effect the implied warranty of merchantability and some secured transactions stuff, so— _Ow_!”

She lifts her fingers from the sore spot right where his shoulder turns into his collarbone, frowning. He rolls his shoulder once, trying to loosen it back up, but then she transforms into an epic-level dick and presses again. “Hey, _ow_!” he repeats, and jerks away from her.

Her whole face creases into a series of worried lines. “That hurts?” 

“Yeah, it hurts, I fell asleep reading a textbook and dropped it on my shoulder!” The worry stretches out further, like really irritating and unnecessary taffy, and Wade levels her a look. “Honestly,” he promises, reaching up to cross his bare chest right over the shriveled-up thing he calls a heart. And, uh, on the other side too, because he can’t remember where exactly his heart _is_. “Studying in bed is dangerous. I think it kills three potential bar examinees every year.”

“Well, as your doctor, I’d suggest you stop doing that,” she instructs, and returns to her poke-and prod session.

 

**2012**

“It’s like there’s a black cloud hanging over him,” Wade thinks aloud to Dr. Cho as he lays back and thinks of England. Well, okay, it’s not England. He tried England the first time, just to avoid the awkwardness of looking at the top of her head during the most delicate of inspection times, but the next night he’d ended up with some really freaky dreams about Queen Elizabeth. Instead, he’s lying back and thinking of Clint Barton. He wonders if Clint appreciates that.

Dr. Cho nods her head slightly. “And?” she asks.

“And having a friend who’s overwhelmed with sad storm clouds of mopey miserableness means you can’t really do anything but hope the clouds disappear.” He shuts up right then, not because of the extremely personal place where Dr. Cho’s fingers are wandering, but because of the thought itself. Because he likes Clint a lot, he and Clint are definitely tight—bro-tight, maybe, if Clint’d tolerate a bro like Wade (jury’s hung on that decision, no way twelve people’d ever agree)—but this is the first time he’s actually verbalized to someone other than Clint that he and Clint are friends. 

He likes that. Maybe too much.

“I guess that’s part of being a friend, though,” he continues once Dr. Cho steps away from the exam table. He props himself up on his elbows and glances over at her, and she raises her eyebrows. “The part where you feel flaccid and useless when they don’t want your help.”

“Your word choice leaves a lot to be desired,” she comments, and motions for him to sit all the way up.

 

**2013**

“And another of our yearly dates, done,” Wade laments to Dr. Cho as she finishes her last couple notations in his chart. She’s trying not to smile at him the way she _always_ tries not to smile at him, but he can see the place where it creeps into her eyes. In the pantheon of cancer-sniffing super doctors, she’s pretty high-ranked. Maybe not Zeus himself, but maybe a sister or something. On account of the girl-hair and the girl-shoes, and everything. “You’ll cry into whatever doctors drink tonight, right?”

Dr. Cho shoots him a withering look. “You think that much of yourself?” she asks.

“Absolutely not _ever_ ,” he returns, and she finally abandons her seriousness for a tiny smile. It feels like a victory deserving of a fist-pump, so he pumps away as he hops off the table and trots over to the chair where he tossed his clothes. He’s probably supposed to wait until she’s gone to start putting everything back on, but at this point, they’ve practically trekked out to third base together. 

He’s tugging up his boxer-briefs when she asks, “In a hurry today?”

“I—” he starts to answer, but she quirks an eyebrow. Funny thing about doctors responsible for managing your balls (and other body parts): it’s pretty hard to lie to them. He snaps the waistband of his underwear before rubbing the side of his neck. “I’ve got somebody waiting for me,” he explains. “In the waiting room. Because I figured the not-waiting room wasn’t really appropriate, and it’s pretty hot to leave somebody in the car.”

Wade’s not sure what he expects, exactly, but it’s certainly not an actual, measurable, detectable smile.

“Good for you, Mister Wilson,” she says, and he smiles right back at her.


	50. Renovation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mockturtle8 requested: _ohmygod so I just read your headcanon about Tony doing his spur-of-the-moment bathroom remodelling, and I know we don't get to vote but I would totally love to read a one-shot about Bruce coming home to find Tony redoing their bathroom. Just saying. You've got a guaranteed audience for that, if you ever write it._
> 
> This request is actually several weeks old, but I decided to save it up and post it now. The ficlet is based in part off a tumblr mini-story in which Tony starts demolishing a random bathroom and Bruce warns him about demolishing the master bath. But, of course, this is Tony.
> 
> For some reason, I struggled with the pronouns in this one, so it feels clunky to me. Just as a warning.

“No, Tony,” Bruce declares, and for the first time in the last three years, he seriously considers walking out and spending the night in a hotel.

Tony’s response is muffled, more a grunt and a grumble than anything else, and Bruce sighs as the other man nails his head on _something_ before emerging from under the vanity. A vanity which does not match the one Bruce brushed his teeth at this morning, topped by a sink that he’s never seen before.

Sawdust and bits of drywall cling to Tony’s black shirt and pepper his dark hair. He’s ripped one leg of his jeans at the knee, not that he seems to care.

“I can explain,” he says. He spreads his hands out in front of him; they’re coated in dust and grime, his knuckles cut and scraped. “I know you’re thinking about yelling, and before you yell, I can explain.”

“Can you explain beyond ‘I got bored on my day off and decided to demolish our bathroom?’” Bruce demands. He can feel the headache he only recently chased away with aspirin creeping back in. “And where—”

“Steve’s,” Tony answers immediately. “Steve and Bucky’s, all night, and as long as we need tomorrow to get the worst of this done.”

“We?” Bruce repeats. He feels only slightly vindicated by the immediate sheepishness that blooms across Tony’s face.

But only slightly, and only because his frustration is absolutely warranted. 

Before him, the master bathroom stretches out like a warzone or an abandoned, post-apocalyptic city, a monument to decay, debris, and suspiciously-absent bathtubs. He’s not exaggerating, either: the tub is gone, as is a vast majority of the wall behind the tub’s rightful place and nearly all the floor tile throughout the room. The toilet and the absolutely unnecessary bidet are intact, thankfully, but Bruce can tell from the trailing pipes that the sink is not yet functional. He worries momentarily about the other fixtures in the bathroom, then realizes that worry in any form is futile; apparently, their free-standing shower is now without a showerhead or knobs, rendering it useless except as decoration.

In the place where the bathtub will, presumably, be replaced, there’s a stack of floor tile boxes, three cans of paint, various containers of nuts and bolts, and two—yes, _two_ toolboxes. There’s also several plastic bags from the Home Depot, bags that Bruce seriously hopes contain pipe fittings, showerheads, and the other accessories necessary to fix their bathroom.

Their tool-strewn, disorganized, half- _destroyed_ bathroom.

He rubs his face with both hands. When he dares to open his eyes, the mess is still there.

“Tony,” he says again, helplessly. 

“Look, I know, okay?” Tony steps over a set of wrenches, closing the distance between them with a measured, cautious purpose. Bruce expects hands to land on his arms or waist, but before Tony touches, he stops himself. A quick flash of his palms reveals just how filthy he really is, so Bruce sighs and quietly strips out of his dark suit coat. He’s spent the entire day in his coat and tie, tormented by back-to-back hearings that each ran long and ending in a very unpleasant telephone conversation with child services. He threw his tie in the back of the car halfway through his drive home, but he’s otherwise still fully clothed.

Well, until he tosses his coat back into the bedroom and lets Tony reel him in. Secretly, he’s craved this since the second hearing of the day went pear-shaped; he considers admitting his need for touch aloud, but then Tony crowds into his personal space and Bruce realizes he’s already figured it out.

“Barton didn’t text about things reaching ‘Chicken Little’ critical mass—you know, falling skies and whatever—until after I’d bribed the delivery guys to help me drag the old tub out to the yard.” Bruce snorts something he secretly hopes Tony’ll ignore, because he’s not sure he can stand his own traitorous amusement, right now. “Which, by the way, is where it still is, along with the new one. Thor’s already offered to help with that, plus you know I’m a whiz with tile—” 

“Only because you tore up Miles’s bathroom last year,” Bruce points out.

“—and I’ll even go buy you super fancy bubble bath if that’s what it takes to keep you from storming off to the Holiday Inn for the night.” Bruce tries to avoid the momentary spike of guilt by casting his eyes at the floor, but Tony never glances away. “Yeah, because I saw the pissed-off rage monster look in the doorway and didn’t immediately realize you were thinking about room service and free HBO.”

“You were under the sink when I walked in,” Bruce reminds him.

“Okay, I heard you huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf. Point is: don’t ditch me tonight.” Bruce raises his eyebrows, and Tony immediately mirrors the expression. Normally, he’d laugh about it, maybe find a joke about Tony’s former life as a mockingbird; today, he’s too exhausted to do much more than crack a rueful smile. “We’ll order Chinese, I’ll tire you out and tuck you in, and tomorrow you can, I don’t know, take the AmEx on a shopping spree.” This time, Bruce can’t contain his chuckle. “Maybe even two shopping sprees. Granted, I just dropped a pretty liberal chunk of change on a new master bathroom, but since you _still_ get half your clothes at the Republic of Bananas—”

Bruce rolls his eyes, then, sparking a grin of relief from Tony. He’s frequently heard that, in their household, eye-rolls translate more to long-suffering amusement than actual frustration, and he’s not sure he can deny it. Regardless, Tony swoops in for a kiss, catches only the corner of Bruce’s mouth, and flashes his very best disappointed pout. “I don’t care what _you_ do,” Bruce says, knowing too well that his tiny smile betrays his attempt at a deadpan delivery, “but I’m going to change, find a beer, and try to forget this day ever happened. You’re welcome to join me if you wash up.”

“See, but I know for a fact that you like me dirty,” Tony points out, complete with a salacious eyebrow wiggle. 

It’s a ridiculous line, possibly the worst of all conceivable jokes, but Bruce laughs anyway. He laughs, and suddenly, some of his justifiable anger starts to slip away. It’s not the bathroom, he reminds himself; home improvement projects are a natural risk of Tony using his accrued vacation time on days when Bruce can’t stay home and pin him to the mattress. No, he’s frustrated at the day he’s had, at battles waged but not necessarily won, and about children he’s now forced to worry about a little harder than when he first stepped into the judicial center that morning.

His bathroom’s a disaster, his cases aren’t much better, but the rest of his life’s still fairly intact. He needs to feel grateful for that.

Tony nudges his cheek with his nose, almost a nuzzle, and Bruce sighs. “Help me change?” he asks, and he’s surprised at how caught his voice sounds.

“Oh, I’ll help you with a lot more than _changing_ ,” Tony promises, and starts backing him into their bedroom. 

The disasters, Bruce decides, can wait.


	51. The Fifth Time Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ladykiki requested: _You have no idea how ridiculously excited I am to read all the prompt fics. So thank you. But could I prompt: “Don’t be fooled, Tony could join Mensa tomorrow if he’d just bother to fill out the paperwork.” That is, when (how) Bruce realized Tony was that smart or when (how) Miles realized Bruce was right. Or (for all the love) both. If it's not too much to ask._
> 
> For some reason, I'm incredibly fond of writing early-days Tony and Bruce right now. I'm not entirely sure why, either.
> 
> Also, to be clear: child welfare law is incredibly specialized and nuanced. It's not something most attorneys deal with every day, and it is fair for Tony--who used to be in civil litigation and is new to both the D.A.'s office and appellate work--to not know much about it.

“Done, done, and done!”

Bruce glances up from the case file he’s reading exactly one half-second before something lands on his hand. Said “something” is a spiral-bound document, at least twenty-five pages long, and—

“Are you actually finished?” he asks, raising his head.

Standing in front of his desk, Tony Stark beams. Bruce’s only known Tony for a few months, now—a few awkward, half-clumsy months, thanks to Tony’s irrepressible and sometimes irritating energy—but he’s grown used to the beaming. Actually, he’s grown used to a number of things: Tony’s fondness for caramelized onions, for instance, or his adversarial relationship with his long-haired tuxedo kitten. It just happens that, for some reason, the smile sticks out.

“Four fact-based issues and a kitchen-sink Constitutional argument? Please. I could’ve written this standing on my head and hung over.” Tony transfers a stack of paperwork from Bruce’s spare chair to the floor and throws himself into it. “Read it over, make changes. Pepper’s on deck to re-run whatever pages don’t quite have that ‘Doctor Banner couldn’t screw up a termination trial even if you paid him to’ flair to them. Otherwise, though, we’re good to go.”

Bruce nods, flipping idly through the thick appellate brief. The appeal revolves around a hotly-contested termination of parental rights hearing, one that spanned three days and required ten witnesses—three called by the state, the rest brought by the parents. Bruce’d provided Tony a list of instructive cases a week ago, but he hadn’t expected—

“You really finished this,” he says. He’s unfamiliar with the feeling that creeps up from his belly, surprise mingled with something like incredible warmth.

Tony shrugs. “Kinda what I do, picking apart ridiculous arguments with a lot of big words.”

“But you don’t do child welfare law.” Bruce glances across his desk to witness a second lift of Tony’s shoulders. It’s tighter than the first, better controlled, and Bruce feels himself frown. “You said when the appeal came in that you’d need at least a month to familiarize yourself with the case law. That you might bump it back to me if the nuances ‘got above your pay grade.’” Tony lets out a tiny huff of breath and twists to look out the window. Either Bruce is hallucinating, or there’s the barest hint of embarrassment trekking across his expression. “I assumed—”

“Yeah, well, I went through the whole five stages of grief before realizing that it made more sense to learn everything now than bug you until one of us retires.” 

There’s a taut line of defensiveness caught in the back of Tony’s voice. Bruce immediately smiles, an almost reflexive attempt to defuse that thread of— What, exactly? Hurt? “You wouldn’t be bugging me.”

Tony raises an eyebrow. “You sure about that?”

“I’ve voluntarily eaten dinner with you in public four times now. If your straw-wrapper snakes haven’t chased me off, legal questions definitely won’t.”

For a moment, Bruce thinks he witnesses a genuine light flicker across Tony’s face. He wonders sometimes about Tony and the weight he seems to perpetually carry on his shoulders. There’s a darkness surrounding him, a reverse halo that Bruce only notices in occasional, quiet moments. He’s spent the last several years of his life learning to understand the things that motivate or destroy strangers, but for some reason, Tony Stark remains a mystery.

He also smiles at Bruce, two degrees too warm. “Speaking of which, you owe me at least a drink for finishing that.” When Bruce frowns, he gestures toward the brief. “Unless my dabbling in your overly-intricate area of the law isn’t up to snuff, of course.”

“I’m sure it will be,” Bruce answers, almost entirely without thinking.

Tony shrugs as he stands. “Read it first.”

“I will—and I’ll meet you at the back stairwell at five-thirty for dinner.” 

The beat of hesitation feels like the breath before leaping off the high-dive, stuffed with anticipation and a touch of unnecessary anxiety. But then Tony smiles easily, and Bruce can exhale long enough to smile back. “We’re going to On the Border,” Tony announces, and Bruce bites back a groan. “We’re going, you are not lecturing me or anyone else on how absolutely horrendous nine-tenths of their menu is, and you’re buying me a margarita.” 

“And hoping I don’t gain twenty-five pounds,” Bruce retorts.

“Hey, I’m sure you can figure out some way to work off the extra weight,” Tony counters, and Bruce laughs at his overblown, unnecessary wink.

The brief, as it turns out, isn’t up to snuff. No, instead, it is absolutely _perfect_.

Bruce buys Tony a margarita, and then, the rest of his meal as well.


	52. Every One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> upchuckypuppy requested: _If you are still taking prompts, well, how about anyone in the MPU universe working with the county law librarian?_
> 
> This is not entirely on point, I will admit that. But this prompt also offered me the opportunity to draw this story to a close in the perfect way, so I seized it. 
> 
> Thank you for making the first anniversary of the MPU wonderful, every one. I've never enjoy this universe more than when I'm sharing it with others, and this week has been no exception.

There are two chief assistant district attorneys and seven plain old assistant district attorneys under Suffolk County District Attorney Nicholas Fury, and the courthouse law librarian knows each and every one of them.

 

Phil Coulson’s the most focused of any of the nine, of course, always walking in and immediately setting to work. Often, he researches quietly, keeping to himself at a back table; when he needs help, he asks politely, listens well, and peppers the conversation with appropriate follow-ups. He never fails in his thanks, either.

But on rare days, he stops by to pick up one of the broader-reach newspapers the library subscribes to—usually either _The New York Times_ or _Chicago Tribune_ —and flips straight to the sports page.

Given the grumbling, he’s likely a Cubs fan.

 

Maria Hill rarely stops by the library at all, and always arrives with a flourish. She works quickly and efficiently, nods her thanks, and leaves without much conversation. She holds herself like a marble statue, cold and aloof, and sets frivolity aside.

But occasionally, she pauses to glance out the window or to lose herself in her thoughts.

The work is hard for a man. The career is hard for a woman.

 

Bruce Banner uses the library as a retreat, a place to hide away when activity in the office overwhelms him. He leaves the three books on child welfare law—books he suggested the library buy in the first place—on their shelf, plants himself at the end of a table, and works until the tension unwinds from his shoulders. 

Nine years of habit are hard to undo, but he retreats less frequently after he marries.

That may in part be because the library is a place of punishment for his teenager when school isn’t in session, but that is another story entirely.

 

Thor Odinson most frequently arrives with an entourage of frustrated parents, opposing counsel, and juvenile services officers, seizing the library as an impromptu conference room. Few of the public conference spaces, after all, are large enough for the six to eight people who usually trail him, and none are in a place where his booming voice isn’t a liability. He drowns out the internet radio station that perpetually pipes in low-level classical music, and occasionally shakes the windowpanes.

He always apologizes with a tray of his fiancée’s brownies, however.

It’s not difficult to forgive him.

 

Natasha Romanoff never works or researches when she steps into the room. When she arrives, arms full of files and expression purposefully blank, she helps herself to a piece of saltwater taffy from the bowl inside the door and moves to stand in front of the window. The library stands on the same side of the building as the park and overlooks the playground, and that’s where she stands.

She watches games of tag in the summer and snowball fights in the winter.

She always leaves without saying a word.

 

Tony Stark arrives at 10:59 a.m. every Wednesday morning, exactly one minute before appellate opinions are sent over to the library, and stands impatiently in front of the ancient, unruly fax machine. The district attorney’s office receives the same stack of opinions at the same time, not that it deters him. Even on the morning when a burst pipe rendered most of the fourth floor useless, he arrived one minute before release, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

He skims the opinions as they arrive, eyes trailing over page after page. He only occasionally grumbles or smiles.

The one Wednesday that he’s out sick, Bruce Banner arrives in his stead. No clarification is needed.

 

James Buchanan Barnes asks the most questions of any of his colleagues. He walks in with a legal pad and bends over the desk, moving through his queries—and often, his logic—with easy expertise. Most often, he already knows the answers when he arrives, but they work through the steps anyway; they open books to close them again, dust off ancient volumes of outdated law for persuasive arguments, and sort through the stack of recently-published appellate opinions.

He’s a talented attorney, but quietly unsure of himself. It’s almost as though he expects the rules to change now that he’s switched sides.

He ends every visit with a new anecdote about his daughter, though, and a picture almost always follows.

 

Clint Barton relies on the statute books in the library rather than his own, complaining every time that the set in his office are too new and unbroken. He lets these books, battered and bruised, fall open on the tables; he lays them as flat as their broken spines will allow and then leafs through them, scribbling notes accordingly.

On one slow, lazy winter day, he explains that all he bought all his undergraduate and law school textbooks used, and that he liked the way those books felt: the weight, the shape, the memories of the people who read them before.

When the library’s set of statutes is replaced in its entirety, Clint lovingly boxes up the old set and carries it home.

 

Steve Rogers almost never requires the library except to unearth ancient statutes in bizarre charging situations, but he visits nearly once a week, anyway. He seems to know that his husband stops by, dropping occasional questions about his stickier cases, but otherwise he eats saltwater taffy and chats about the world: sports, politics, his daughter, the weather. He’s friendly and kind, and always leaves with a smile.

He admits one day that sometimes, he needs a few minutes away from the reminder that the world is full of people who make poor, misguided, or evil choices. As the gatekeeper of criminal charges in their county, after all, he sees all of them.

He brings candy canes during the holidays, and, every year, humbly murmurs his thanks.

 

There are nine attorneys working under Nick Fury. Their personalities are almost as varied as the world itself: focused and flighty, loud and reserved, inquisitive and introverted, reliant and independent. Together, they work as well-greased cogs in a machine, an understated band of heroes that keeps their community safe.

Individually, they’re good people, every one.


End file.
